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World Population Could Reach Nearly 11 Billion By 2100

vinces99 writes "A new analysis shows that world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of this century, according to a United Nations report issued June 13. That's about 800 million, or about 8 percent, more than the previous projection issued in 2011. The change is largely because birth rates in Africa have not declined as quickly as had been expected, according to Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington's Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences. The U.N. estimates use statistical methods developed at the center. The current African population is about 1.1 billion and it is now expected to reach 4.2 billion, nearly a fourfold increase, by 2100, Raftery said."

322 comments

  1. What?!? by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Funny

    How the hell is the NSA supposed to keep track of all those people?!?!

    1. Re:What?!? by Freshly+Exhumed · · Score: 5, Funny

      Silly, when the big scooper trucks grab people up and feed them into the food chain the NSA will just file them under Project Make Room!

      --
      I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
    2. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      With your tax dollars. Now get back to work. You'll need all the productivity to pay for all those NSA bills.

    3. Re:What?!? by shentino · · Score: 2

      Finally, a good reason to stick with IPv4.

    4. Re:What?!? by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 4, Informative

      This makes little sense. The world population is supposed to peak in 2030 at 8.5 billion.

      http://www.businessinsider.com/analyst-world-population-will-peak-at-85-billion-in-2030-2012-11

      Even as population trends, this 11 billion by end of century figure is not believable. We can't predict the weather or climate change, but we can easily predict population growth and the African population growth angle is absolutely not justified in a non-speculative sociology realm.

      --
      Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    5. Re:What?!? by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

      Then explain how they can predict a population peak.

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    6. Re:What?!? by zAPPzAPP · · Score: 3, Funny

      There can only be so many different people.
      The trick is to spot all the doubles and save on diskspace and computing power!

    7. Re:What?!? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      By being more clever than you! (Or me, for that matter. Come on, trust the experts at least once.)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    8. Re:What?!? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1, Funny

      Silly, when the big scooper trucks grab people up and feed them into the food chain the NSA will just file them under Project Soylent Green!

      Fixed that for you.

    9. Re:What?!? by lobotomir · · Score: 2

      You're effectively comparing one hypothetical model against the other. The models address conditions many decades from now. You cannot possibly make a dependable judgement as to which one makes sense.

    10. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Silly, when the big scooper trucks grab people up and feed them into the food chain the NSA will just file them under Project Soylent Green!

      Fixed that for you.

      Soylent Green is people?! Oh my god, how could you spoil that for me?!

    11. Re:What?!? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Africa will still be a pathetic continent with no human development

      I don't know about you, but human development in Africa was way ahead of human development on other continents for hundreds of thousands of years. That's got to count for something.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    12. Re:What?!? by Nutria · · Score: 3, Interesting

      human development in Africa was way ahead of human development on other continents for hundreds of thousands of years.

      Primitive man didn't first leave Africa that much evolutionarily sooner than did H. Sapiens.

      That's got to count for something.

      Not really. Why do you think they left?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    13. Re: What?!? by Gilmoure · · Score: 1

      *golf clap*

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
    14. Re:What?!? by scuzzlebutt · · Score: 1

      Who hurt you?

      --
      In C++, your friends can see your privates.
    15. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Easily, since most of these people aren't Americans. Also, desperately poor people don't generate much in the way of electronic communications to store and monitor since most of their income is spent on not starving to death.

    16. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Turn in your nerd card. The film Soylent Green is based on the novel Make Room, Make Room!

    17. Re:What?!? by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 2

      They use birth rates and death rates to calculate population models and these are very stable. + or - 3 billion for the continent of Africa? Not likely. I don't know if you are versed in statistics, but the population of a single continent doesn't fluctuate +/- 100% within a century due to a new model. Not for an established field with over 200 years of population trending.

      --
      Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    18. Re:What?!? by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "Then explain how they can predict a population peak."

      This statistics wizard can explain it to you with boxes, it's quite convincing.

      http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

    19. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      By figuring out that we cannot produce enough food to feed more than 8.5 billion people, and that increased polution and green-house gases (that many people produce a lot of methane and co2) - that we'd end up with increased deaths to more than make up for increased births...

    20. Re:What?!? by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is science and this is done with statistical models and several decades of information to feed the data into the models. And then there is public opinion.

      Surprisingly, neither the models nor future results are much affected by public opinion, no matter what public opinion happens to be at the moment. One of these 2 methods is really useful for forecasting, the other not so much.

      --
      Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    21. Re:What?!? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I'll break some news to you: If Africa is strained with an almost desperate need for water as it is, with all the countries along the Nile likely to fare a war conflict over it in near future, how do you think the continent will support a four times larger population? Don't tell me you need a statistical model for that.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    22. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's right - why read the book when you can just watch the movie?

    23. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No you didn't fix it for him. Soylent Green was based on the novel "Make Room! Make Room!"

      Fixed that for you.

    24. Re:What?!? by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 1

      The link in this article references the UW Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences in what appears to be a peer reviewed paper.

      Your link references some dude's op-ed.

      I know which source I would tend to believe more...

    25. Re:What?!? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's part of an attempt to convince people that we need to keep increasing energy production, keep increasing farming output, keep increasing pretty much everything.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    26. Re:What?!? by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Many of them will migrate. To here, for instance.

    27. Re:What?!? by khallow · · Score: 1

      I don't know why you think it's implausible. If old fertility (and food) still held, we'd see populations far larger than that.

      Just a relatively successful effort with HIV in Africa probably explains most of that population difference. Currently, I think there's a window of opportunity here for Africa, the Middle East, and other high population growth areas to change before they experience one or more massive population die-offs.

    28. Re:What?!? by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 1

      At least the NSA's database of records will be useful for helping criminal defendants once the cell phone company has destroyed them...

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    29. Re:What?!? by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      This is statistics which is a core part of science, statistics is not about absolute certainty. There is a chance of the 11B figure being correct which depends on the assumptions made about future human behavior, the perennial question is: does a slightly different set of assumptions return a figure that's (say) under 1B?

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    30. Re:What?!? by Thangodin · · Score: 1

      Agreed. What they are predicting is not a population increase in Africa, but a devastating population collapse. What Africa is currently undergoing is the baby boom, when a scattershot reproductive strategy (have lots of kids, no birth control, and hope some live) meets modern medicine. But Africa does not have the food, resources, or social capital to support this, unlike the first world during their baby boom. Emigration is not an option either; the first world has already begun to face the limitations of cultural assimilation, realizing that a large population from a culture with low social capital cannot reasonably be expected to assimilate to the norms of a country with high social capital without massive disruption. The habits and traditions just aren't there. Tribal warfare--gang violence--and zero sum economics (you get rich only by taking from others; a common idea in Europe until only three or four centuries ago, and probably less) are still the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. They're like us, but a few centuries back.

    31. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you just asked how is the American National Security Agency supposed to track Africans.
      Go on, let it sink in for a bit.

    32. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The hypothesis proposing that homo erectus originated in Africa has them leaving 1.8 million years ago at the latest...I don't know what you mean by "evolutionarily sooner...in that hypothesis, they sure left Africa "temporally" a lot sooner than H. Sapiens, a species that doesn't even occur for another 1.6 million years...8 times the entire period of existence of H. Sapiens....

    33. Re:What?!? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Wherever you live, there must be a lot of free space. Let me guess...Siberia?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    34. Re:What?!? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      Perhaps you should go and read the Harry Harrison short story "Roommates", or the full length novel "Make Room, Make Room!" (from which "Roommates" was distilled), in order to get the joke.

      I was reading "Make Room, Make Room!) on the train to my appointment for a vasectomy. Seemed appropriate, somehow.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. mass effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just in time for the first contact war . . .

  3. Won't happen by Niris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Unless we can support that much life with food, water and other resources, war for diminishing resources will wipe out enough population before we even get close to that.

    1. Re:Won't happen by cod3r_ · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      hope you are right.

    2. Re:Won't happen by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      It's awesome how nature self balances.

      Blizzard needs to use some of their billions to employ mother nature for their next RTS.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    3. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Norman Borlaug disagrees.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Future_of_global_farming_and_food_supply

    4. Re:Won't happen by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unless we can support that much life with food, water and other resources, war for diminishing resources will wipe out enough population before we even get close to that.

      Reverend Malthus wrote the same in 1798 in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", and was wrong then. Malthusian predictions have been wrong ever since.

      I fear there will be great loss of life in the region due to war, but such resources are only scarce where local governments force them to become so to gain control over their people.

      Technology improves faster than population grows. As population growth rate has been slowing down (as a %) and technological improvements have only come at a faster pace, it's a mystery why people think the problems will get worse.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:Won't happen by Holi · · Score: 2

      Good for him. Unfortunately food is not the issue, Potable water is.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    6. Re:Won't happen by girlintraining · · Score: 1

      Unless we can support that much life with food, water and other resources, war for diminishing resources will wipe out enough population before we even get close to that.

      Well, there's the problem with trends. Assuming they go on forever means that, for example, everyone should now have about 52 model-Ts in their garage. That said... the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate and there's no sign that it's going to slow down.

      The question isn't whether the planet can support that number, but what kind of life will be possible in that future. We may wind up breeding ourselves into anarchy as all but the richest of us struggle to keep enough food on our plates and death by starvation will be the number one cause of death worldwide. I'm not sure what kind of society or civilization will be possible in that world... it may be that humanity simply can't advance beyond a certain point because we wind up spreading like a virus, consuming all resources until none are left and then dying off, like any other invasive species.

      The sad part is... despite our own self-awareness and consciousness, it will have proven we can't outgrow our animalistic nature and so, at least in evolutionary terms, humanity is a dead end. Something else will have to evolve out of the situation before we can progress beyond it.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    7. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We already produce plenty of everything for another 2 billion people. Not saying it won't be uncomfortable, but the real boundaries on population are still well over the horizon. Think 50 billion, and that's with no progress or innovations that lower our footprint. I do'nt *want* to live in that world, but the world would function.

    8. Re:Won't happen by camperdave · · Score: 1

      Good for him. Unfortunately food is not the issue, Potable water is.

      I'd like to see the water that couldn't be put in a pot.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    9. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No technology can change the absolute fact that we have finite land and finite energy.

      Eventually, Malthus will be right.

    10. Re:Won't happen by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 4, Funny

      Eventually, Malthus will be right.

      Eventually, the universe will reach heat death where all useful energy has been used.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    11. Re:Won't happen by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2

      the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate and there's no sign that it's going to slow down.

      Actually there are plenty of signs that it is going to slow down. So many signs that population is expected to peak around the year 2011 and start decreasing.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    12. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      hope you are right.

      You *hope* he is right?! You *hope* billions of people are killed from war, famine, and hunger? These words actually formed in your brain and trickled out onto your keyboard? Really?!

    13. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We also have finite population, and always will. What's your point?

    14. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone's gotta die sometime.

    15. Re:Won't happen by camperdave · · Score: 2

      ... resources are only scarce where local governments force them to become so to gain control over their people.

      Currently true. However, there are hard limits as to how many people a certain tract of land will support.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    16. Re:Won't happen by citizenr · · Score: 0

      hope you are right.

      You *hope* he is right?! You *hope* billions of people are killed from war, famine, and hunger? These words actually formed in your brain and trickled out onto your keyboard? Really?!

      Yes.

      --
      Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
    17. Re:Won't happen by alexander_686 · · Score: 1

      Because population growth is relatively easy to model and has a nice continues slope.

      Predicating productivity growth (which is what really matters) is hard. Technological is only one part of productivity and is the hardest to model. It is not a nice curve. It’s lumpy – with huge fits and starts. Billions were spent on computers between 1960 to 1980 with little effect on productivity. In the 1980s the code was crack and massive productivity gains. Few people guess that the internet would have such a large impact on productive so fast. I am still waiting for a fustian generator – only 20 years from now.

      Now, like you, I am an optimist on the issue but it’s not like there is an iron law out there. What has me concerned is that the growth in productivity has been dropping in developed countries for the past decade. Maybe it is a measurement problem. Maybe we are in a lull between the great gains brought by IT between 1980-2000. But I am still a little worried.

    18. Re:Won't happen by j-beda · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, there's the problem with trends. Assuming they go on forever means that, for example, everyone should now have about 52 model-Ts in their garage. That said... the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate and there's no sign that it's going to slow down.

      Except that the growth rate has been decreasing for a while now.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_population_growth_rate

      Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been declining since peaking in 1962 and 1963 at 2.20% per annum. In 2009, the estimated annual growth rate was 1.1%.[5] The CIA World Factbook gives the world annual birthrate, mortality rate, and growth rate as 1.915%, 0.812%, and 1.092% respectively.[6] The last 100 years have seen a rapid increase in population due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity[7] made possible by the Green Revolution.[8][9][10]

      The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 88.0 million in 1989, to a low of 73.9 million in 2003, after which it rose again to 75.2 million in 2006. Since then, annual growth has declined. In 2009, the human population increased by 74.6 million, which is projected to fall steadily to about 41 million per annum in 2050, at which time the population will have increased to about 9.2 billion.[5] Each region of the globe has seen great reductions in growth rate in recent decades, though growth rates remain above 2% in some countries of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.[11]

    19. Re:Won't happen by AmazingRuss · · Score: 1

      "Technology improves faster than population grows"

      So far.

    20. Re:Won't happen by cffrost · · Score: 1

      hope you are right.

      You *hope* he is right?! You *hope* billions of people are killed from war, famine, and hunger? These words actually formed in your brain and trickled out onto your keyboard? Really?!

      Yes.

      How come?

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
    21. Re:Won't happen by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate and there's no sign that it's going to slow down.

      Actually there are plenty of signs that it is going to slow down. So many signs that population is expected to peak around the year 2011 and start decreasing.

      It depends. Much of the population growth has been fueled by one thing - oil. The availability and low cost of oil pretty much created the population boom. After all, at the start of the 20th century, the world was only 2B or so (just over 1B at the start of the 19th). By the end, it was a hair under 7B (we hit 7B under a decade ago).

      Of course, we're already starting to pay the price for it, and with energy getting more expensive, it should limit population growth significantly.

    22. Re:Won't happen by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Unless we can support that much life with food, water and other resources, war for diminishing resources will wipe out enough population before we even get close to that."

      I agree it won't happen, but it won't happen for other reasons.

      Studies like this invariably project current statistical trends onward as though they will never change. But that's BS, because they always change.

      If we take PAST studies, for example, even from just a few decades ago, we were told that China and India would have way more than twice as many people as they currently do. Further, food production trends were also projected as linear so even the population we really do have would have been starving.

      You should take such projections with a grain of salt the size of a 5-gallon bucket.

    23. Re:Won't happen by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

      Or disease will.

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    24. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But nobody knows what those limits are, since we've never hit them.

    25. Re:Won't happen by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      Eventually, Malthus will be right.

      Eventually, the universe will reach heat death where all useful energy has been used.

      That's not going to happen.

      Also, technological advances are a CONSEQUENCE of large populations. Small populations huddle around fires. Large populations are in everyone's best interest.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    26. Re:Won't happen by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      In a relatively free economy, problems, counterintuitively, are solved faster than they become serious issues.

      Assuming the year 2100, and the years leading up to it, are relatively free of both general warlordism and corruption, requiring kickbacks for everything, and overbearing government (rationing, or cumulative regulatory weight people give up as in a warlord state) we can indeed expect plenty.

      Julian Simon made a career of making 10 year bets on issues of shortage, longevity, and general health, vs. gloom-and-doomers.

      Another way to phrase it is people invent ways to compensate for easy fruit picking getting harder and harder, and do so faster than the difficulty impacts the economy in gloom-and-doom ways.

      After the results of the first 10-year bet, a complete disaster for the doomsayers of the 1970s, Isaac Asimov, one such, admitted he was wrong, even if he didn't understand why.

      Remember: This isn't a political narrative. It's actual scientific theory verified time and again by counterintuitive predictions.

      I used it to predict the Peak Oil concept was, in fact, BS, and it's indeed turning out to be.

      One more thing, adaptation and invention are not instantaneous. His bets were 10 years, which was a granularity so small he was still uneasy.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    27. Re:Won't happen by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

      I can't believe these words formed in your brain and trickled off your keyboard.

      Let's say you take in 30 familys into your home, you share all your resources and your space with them. That's about what it will be like.

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    28. Re:Won't happen by houghi · · Score: 1

      We can. Look at all the food that is thrown away. Then there is the inefficient way of transferring calories by passing tit through animals first.

      Then there is the enormous over consumption of the western world.

      So I am sure if you look at how many calories we would need and how many we would be able to produce, it would be possible. To make the maximum amount of people possible, you would need to restrict consumption per person.

      So more a question of 'do we want it'? The answer is probably no as it would mean to give up everything for the group. Not the best of human features.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    29. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lets start with the biggest resource hogs on the planet then . Americans do your global civic duty and visit your local suicide booth,

    30. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually there are plenty of signs that it is going to slow down. So many signs that population is expected to peak around the year 2011 and start decreasing.

      FTFA: There’s no end in sight for the increase of world population, he added, yet the topic has gone off the world’s agenda in favor of other pressing global issues, including poverty and climate – both of which have ties to world population.

    31. Re:Won't happen by xevioso · · Score: 1

      Yes, we are special. How many giraffe civilizations are there? Which manatee invented the internet, I'd like to meet him... Animals don't even drink beer.

      And the planet doesn't have a perspective, because it's not a sentient being.

    32. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They did that in Warcraft 3...it ended up not being very balanced. :P

    33. Re:Won't happen by Algae_94 · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but couldn't you hope that people stop shooting out babies rather than hope that worldwide wars and famines take care of it? I know that's not realistic. I kind of share the GP's sentiment. Who hopes for famine and war?

    34. Re:Won't happen by Ichijo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Technology improves faster than population grows.

      Technology hasn't yet stopped us from consuming natural resources faster than the Earth can replace them. Nor has it raised fuel efficiency in automobiles as quickly as the price of gasoline has been rising. So that "deus ex machina" that technology will solve all our problems doesn't seem to be working.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    35. Re:Won't happen by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0

      Also, technological advances are a CONSEQUENCE of large populations. Small populations huddle around fires.

      And large populations huddle around nuke fireballs.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    36. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe his point was "Eventually, Malthus will be right." Try reading dipshit.

    37. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You die first, cockroach.

    38. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Malthus was never wrong. 25000 people die of hunger every day - 1 death in 5 globally is from hunger. You don't hear about it on the news though as it is a constant background noise. How high do you want that ratio to do before declaring Malthus 'correct' exactly?

    39. Re:Won't happen by ADRA · · Score: 1

      Assuming it takes about 0.2 kWh to boil one's daily water needs at 365 days == 73kWh per person per year. Even if you assume that only half of the population requires water boiling, that's 175200000 kWh more electricity being expended on boiling water yearly or about 12k US household's current yield which actually doesn't seem so bad as long as the grids are in place to provide it to those that need it, and of course there's the supply of relatively clean desalinated water available (which themselves can add a large overhead).

      (can't find a better figure for boiling 1.8 litres, so cherp up if you have a better number, and assumed that there'd be 50% of the roughtly 4800000 more people requiring boiled water)

      --
      Bye!
    40. Re:Won't happen by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Billions were spent on computers between 1960 to 1980 with little effect on productivity. In the 1980s the code was crack and massive productivity gains.

      What do you mean by "the code was crack"? Has that anything to do with the war on drugs?

      Also, IT alone won't save you. It's just a tool, a lever that - I hope - will allow researchers in other areas to come up with ideas that will transform our industry and agriculture so that we won't be surprised when the need to switch to other sources of energy and raw inputs arises eventually. And you know what? In that role, computers have been put to work from the very beginning. No need to wait for PCs for kids to play Doom and Quake on.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    41. Re:Won't happen by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      From a global point of view there are not many "diminishing" resources.

      Only oil comes too mind directly, coal we still have for millenia and natural gas likely for hundrets of millenia.

      All other resources are always here. Iron, aliminium, glass ... all this can be recycled.

      So the wars are not really about resources (as you can easily get rid of your dependency on 'oil').

      They are about POWER.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    42. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, we are special. How many giraffe civilizations are there?

      The planet doesn't give a shit about our accomplishments; it can't. In the grand scheme of things, we're basically nothing.

    43. Re:Won't happen by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Population growth is not fueld by oil

      That idea is completely retarded.

      Population is growing by poverty. By having no TV. By WANTING children to pay for the elderly parents. By fucking (because you have no TV, or for that matter no birth controll) by living in the third world.

      More or less all 1sr world countries population is onthe decline.

      In the 3rd world javing many childrens is considered necessary to survive.

      Change that mindset and the population will shrink.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    44. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't believe these words formed in your brain and trickled off your keyboard. Let's say you take in 30 familys into your home, you share all your resources and your space with them. That's about what it will be like.

      Ok, tomorrow it starts with you. Someone comes into your house and shoots you in the head because they want your food and they happen to have more guns than you do. The point is, there are better ways to control population than genocide. Everyone dies, you just have to make sure you don't replace those dead with new infants. So if one is hoping for the best outcome, one would hope they hope for one that's not so costly. Hell, I'd hope for mass sterilization before I'd hope for mass war.

    45. Re:Won't happen by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but couldn't you hope that people stop shooting out babies rather than hope that worldwide wars and famines take care of it? I know that's not realistic. I kind of share the GP's sentiment. Who hopes for famine and war?

      Except it won't happen. Even in this day and age, there are many people whocelebrate people having as many babies as possible. In some of the countries that we have helped extend life span, their culture is involved with a lot of procreation, and you just don't change that over night.

      Then there is the resentment of "people tellin' me what to do" which can be pretty extreme in some cases, the biblical encouragement, and some people just seem to have a drive to have a lot of children.

      I'll be surprised if we reach 11 billion, but I do not claim to know what a maximum sustainable population is. We might be able to feed 11 billion people on factory grown algae, and given the huge number, the idea of cannibalism might just occur as not too bad to starving future humans, as creepy as that is.

      But I have absolutely no doubt that humans will find out where the natural system gets overloaded and Nature will adjust our population accordingly. If we survive, it will be a new dark ages.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    46. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see the water that couldn't be put in a pot.

      I think you're making a joke, but there are too many idiots spouting arrant stupidity to tell whether or not you're serious.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    47. Re:Won't happen by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see the water that couldn't be put in a pot.

      Silly boys! Of course Pot needs water. Duuuuhh!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    48. Re:Won't happen by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 0

      Considering that 70% of the planets surface (the oceans) is inhabitated ...
      Considering that roughly 70% of the planers landmasses are inhabitated ...
      Your claim is nonsense.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    49. Re:Won't happen by Spiridios · · Score: 1

      But nobody knows what those limits are, since we've never hit them.

      One could speculate that the hard theoretical limit is when it's not physically possible to shove another person into the space because every empty square cm contains some part of a person. We know the practical limit is somewhere below that number.

    50. Re:Won't happen by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yields per acreage are actually stalling ... and we haven't even hit peak phosphorus yet. Also a fair amount of the technology we use to increase yields is not exactly side effect free, insecticides for instance are killing bees and making people retards.

      How is the Egyptian government keeping water scarce?

    51. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Even in this day and age, there are many people who celebrate people having as many babies as possible. In some of the countries that we have helped extend life span, their culture is involved with a lot of procreation, and you just don't change that over night.

      So we just have to stop sending them relief, and say, You feed them, if you're so concerned! when an overly-compassionate twit asks how we can just sit by when all these poor children in Africa are starving.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    52. Re:Won't happen by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Informative

      Water is a bit more of a concern.

      At current growth rates, the weight of humans would equal the weight of the planet in 500 years.

      At current energy growth rates since the 1600's, the earth will be hotter than boiling water in under 400 years.

      Clearly something has to give.

      So less energy per person- lower quality of life- less water per person.

      Deer do just fine until they wipe out their environment and die off. No war needed.

      When population density is high enough, minor disruptions in food and water delivery, or a disease can kill a lot of people really fast.

      Typical bad plague single pass would kill about 140 million people now. That's just 2%.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    53. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe these words formed in my brain and trickled off my keyboard because I have a shred of humanity. Which you apparently lack. I feel sorry for you and the 'world' you live in.

      Slaughtering billions is a good idea to you? Wow. Instead of coming up with better ideas in housing/food/population control before it becomes a problem. Your idea is to let it become a craphole and take em out back and put a bullet in their heads or just let them 'eat cake'.

    54. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Reverend Malthus wrote the same in 1798 in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", and was wrong then. Malthusian predictions have been wrong ever since.

      Really? So population will continue to grow regardless of the resources available to sustain it?

      Reverend Malthus' error was, as you imply, a failure to consider that technological progress might enable more resources to become available. Niris makes no such error, because they make no such assumption in either direction. They do not assume that technological progress will continue, nor do they assume it will taper off. They are simply pointing out the obvious, that if we do not have the resources to handle 11 billion, then we will not reach 11 billion.

    55. Re:Won't happen by UltraZelda64 · · Score: 1

      Yes, we are special. How many giraffe civilizations are there? Which manatee invented the internet, I'd like to meet him... Animals don't even drink beer.

      I have a cat that likes craft beer. Just try to give me a Busch or Budweiser, I wouldn't want to drink that shit either unless I was desperate or only wanted to get drunk.

    56. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      We don't boil water in order to sterilize it. Why should they have to?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    57. Re:Won't happen by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1, Funny

      That's not going to happen.

      Also, technological advances are a CONSEQUENCE of large populations. Small populations huddle around fires. Large populations are in everyone's best interest.

      Mr Duggar, is that you? Your wife called - she wants another baby.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    58. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      We know the practical limit is somewhere below that number.

      I did some calculations about 10 years ago:
      484,246 sq mi (1,254,197 sq km) are needed for 6 billion people to live, 4 persons per lot, in lots that are 60'x150' (a nice US suburban plot). That is ~ California, Texas and Missouri. Alternatively, France, Spain and The United Kingdom. Does *not* include street, employment, etc.

      296,443 sq mi (767,787 sq km) are needed for 6 billion people to live at the same population density as Manhattan, New York. That is ~ Arizona or Nevada. Alternatively, that ~ double the size of Japan or Zimbabwe. *Does* include streets and employment.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    59. Re:Won't happen by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 0

      Ofc it is going to happen.
      Either the universe is expanding for ever: the heat death happens.
      Or the universe is going to shrink gain and we all die in a new big bang ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    60. Re:Won't happen by the+phantom · · Score: 1

      You are correct that, in the grand scheme of things we don't amount to a hill of beans. However, I am not "the grand scheme of things." I am not the universe, and I am not a planet. I am a human being. As I am not a sociopath, I feel empathy for my fellow human beings. Moreover, I have a desire to maintain my standard of living, and would be happy if others could attain it, as well. Human life and well-being is important to me. I would hope that you would feel the same way.

    61. Re:Won't happen by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      So many signs that population is expected to peak around the year 2011 and start decreasing.

      I think you meant "population growth rate". Anyway, ob. TED Talk.

      Short version: the population will continue to increase due to longevity, but the births have already slowed.

      Short-short version: don't worry, be happy.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    62. Re:Won't happen by camperdave · · Score: 1

      A: Whoosh!
      B: Solar distillation.
      C: Reverse Osmosis.
      D: Nano-fiber filtration.

      There are all sorts of cheap purification techniques out there, and you want us to boil water... like some kind of animal.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    63. Re:Won't happen by paiute · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Your idea is to let it become a craphole and take em out back and put a bullet in their heads or just let them 'eat cake'.

      Jesus. I'll take the cake, please.

      --
      If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    64. Re:Won't happen by camperdave · · Score: 1

      I think we'd hit food and energy production limits long before we hit Gideon style population density limits.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    65. Re:Won't happen by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      I had a dog that turned his nose up at American Budweiser. Nobody believed me, it was tested multiple times.

      He loved beer, he wouldn't drink cereal malt beverages (Bud, Spoors, Swiller, Corona, Zima etc).

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    66. Re:Won't happen by camperdave · · Score: 2

      We know the practical limit is somewhere below that number.

      I did some calculations about 10 years ago: 484,246 sq mi (1,254,197 sq km) are needed for 6 billion people to live, 4 persons per lot, in lots that are 60'x150' (a nice US suburban plot). That is ~ California, Texas and Missouri. Alternatively, France, Spain and The United Kingdom. Does *not* include street, employment, etc.

      296,443 sq mi (767,787 sq km) are needed for 6 billion people to live at the same population density as Manhattan, New York. That is ~ Arizona or Nevada. Alternatively, that ~ double the size of Japan or Zimbabwe. *Does* include streets and employment.

      Presumably you are also not counting the farming acreage needed to supply food for that many people.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    67. Re:Won't happen by compro01 · · Score: 1

      We don't boil water in order to sterilize it. Why should they have to?

      Sterilize? We're not talking about sterilizing water (though that's also useful), we're talking about desalinating water, and steam distillation is about the simplest/cheapest means of doing that.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    68. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      And then everyone remembers where a big chunk of the world's food and technical innovation comes from.

      So, the least productive must first visit the suicide booth.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    69. Re:Won't happen by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He will be correct if and when the population stops growing due to lack of resources.

      He will finally be completely wrong if and when the population stops growing due to prosperity and educated females.

      Until then, go away chicken little.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    70. Re:Won't happen by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      The problem is we're already depleting our water tables in several highly important areas. The US bread basket, central China, large portions of Africa all could face severe, water shortages in the near future, and with no water to irrigate even a minor drought can turn catastrophic.

    71. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      steam distillation is about the simplest/cheapest means of doing that.

      It's simple, but "cheap"? Why do most desalination plants use reverse osmosis?

      And every other month there's "news" of a breakthrough to make desalination easy and cheap. Not that they ever come to market...

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    72. Re:Won't happen by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      I used it to predict the Peak Oil concept was, in fact, BS, and it's indeed turning out to be.

      That's highly debatable and depense largely on what someone means when they say "peak oil". We hit peak "light sweet crude" quite a while back. We probably, though the numbers aren't quite in yet, hit peak crude in general within the past few years. What we haven't hit is peak "complex liquid hydrocarbons", we keep finding more sources that, while harder to extract and refine, are still energy positive, though not as much as oil used to be.

    73. Re:Won't happen by boristdog · · Score: 2

      I think the point was "humans are special to other humans, but not to anyone or anything else" The universe doesn't need us, we need the universe.

    74. Re:Won't happen by lgw · · Score: 1

      The only natural resource that is "consumed" is stored solar power - and there's far more infalling solar power than stored solar power, so that's probably OK.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    75. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We already throw away almost half of all food produced.
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste

      In the west it is pure waste, extra fries thrown out. Leftovers unwanted, blemished tomato thrown out, etc.
      The really odd thing is that the percentage in poor countries is about the same, even with hunger problems.
      There it is lack of refrigeration and the supplies and knowledge to pickle, can and otherwise keep food stable.
      They loose it on the way to market through slow muddy roads, it rots on the shelves when there is a heat wave, etc.

      If we expanded access to proper roads, refrigeration, etc in the poor countries and simply did a better job of portion control in the west most of the food problem would be solved.
      Water is almost the same. In the west we waste it, in the poor countries they usually have water, but it is not sanitary and they lack to resources to pump and roads and pipes transport it.

      The planet could support many more people with as much or greater standard of living if we simply stopped doing it wrong.
      If you see a population distribution map sometime you will see that outside of a few areas the surface of the planet has lots of space. Hell, the Dakotas would love to meet you. Good luck finding anybody to say 'hi' to though.

    76. Re:Won't happen by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2

      Julian Simon made a career of making 10 year bets on issues of shortage, longevity, and general health, vs. gloom-and-doomers.

      That's a wild overstatement. He made two such bets, one with Paul Ehrlich over metals prices and one with David South over timber prices; he won the first bet and lost the second. This isn't "made a career" of anything, and it has all the predictive power of flipping a coin.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    77. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is that not going to happen?
      Are we going to reverse entropy somehow?
      Or find a way to create energy from nothing? (same thing really)

    78. Re:Won't happen by snadrus · · Score: 1

      Mod UP! A few policy changes and the population will war-less-ly (?) shrink from now on.

      --
      Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
    79. Re:Won't happen by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Presumably you are also not counting the farming acreage needed to supply food for that many people.

      Correct. It's absolutely impractical, and just a thought experiment.

      With vertical hydroponic farming of yeasts and vegetables and intensive soy & legume farming, plus intensive waste (including urine/feces) recycling, certainly a multiples more people could live on the earth and even modestly thrive.

      It would require such a massive restructuring of every society -- plus some pretty necessary technological breakthroughs -- that it's not worth more that idle hypothesizing about, though.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    80. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Err, did you just try to prove the research wrong by quoting from the numbers that the research proved wrong? Here's a clue: those numbers on wikipedia are wrong. That's what the article is about.

      I realise it's tradition not to read the article, but to completely ignore the point of even the summary seems excessive, no?

    81. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "At current growth rates, the weight of humans would equal the weight of the planet in 500 years."
      Let me guess. A philosophy grad?

    82. Re: Won't happen by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      The latter is a more accurate description. There was a good Futurama episode that illustrated it well. But you and I and all mankind will be dead long enough before to make it rather academic.

      I prefer to think that time is a spatial dimension, and that we all abide eternally as 4 dimensional objects, experiencing our own creation. No heaven, no hell, except inasmuch as the eternal form that I create each day is painful or joyful... but, no ending, either.

      I think of the universe as an object of finite mass/energy whose least complex state is the singularity, the thing that banged big, and our universe is one of many possible permutations. There are some that erupt out briefly, simple, not formed to sustain much complexity, and others as complex as this, and more.

      There are natural forces pushing us out, and others drawing us in, and their tension makes form possible.

      We're alive. We're part of the natural forces creating complexity, and were not alone, life is in fact spontaneously created by the laws of the multiverse.

      Thats where morality comes from, and beauty, and everything decent. Our push to make this universe as complex as we can, because its beautiful.

      And people, in their teeming masses of billions, their 4d shapes spiraling around this stone like ribbons, are more beautiful than a sparsely populated stone.

      Anyone who wants to cut that short is on the winning side in the end, but I want to try and set the stage for trillions someday, and fuck the opposed.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    83. Re:Won't happen by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Technology hasn't yet stopped us from consuming natural resources faster than the Earth can replace them.

      The technology to do so exists, and is only held back by politics - NIMBYs, politicians, corporations with a vested interest in keeping the status quo, uninformed people who believe all the FUD about renewables and so on.

      It will happen this century, hopefully within my lifetime.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    84. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it is better than the alternative that ALL people are killed from war, famine, and hunger? or

    85. Re:Won't happen by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 0

      Not necessarily. For every genius that comes up with a doomsday weapon, if you have a large enough population, you'll also have a counterbalancing genius that comes up with the defense against the doomsday weapon.

      Of course, if you're aborting fetuses at random, your odds of getting both go down considerably.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    86. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't bother, the GP is obviously one of those expecting the 'singularity' to be just around the corner or magic physics-defying spaceships to whisk the human race off somewhere else to trash.

    87. Re:Won't happen by oreiasecaman · · Score: 2

      Eventually, Malthus will be right.

      Eventually, the universe will reach heat death where all useful energy has been used.

      That's not going to happen.

      You're wrong

      --
      This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
    88. Re: Won't happen by oreiasecaman · · Score: 1

      That nonsense you spouted sounded suspiciously like this -- http://timecube.com/

      --
      This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
    89. Re:Won't happen by khallow · · Score: 1

      I have an abiding suspicion that the grand scheme of things is basically nothing. Our activities probably are as close to a grand scheme as anything else.

    90. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you are completely wrong.

      Read Julian Simon and find out why...

    91. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? You wish to compare the projections of Malthus with the heat death of the universe?

      The timeline we have to worry about a Malthusian dystopia is a few centuries at most. The timeline we have to worry about maximum entropy is on the order of trillions of years and that's probably a significant underestimate.

      The former will happen, if it happens, to people who can still remember us. The latter will happen, if it happens, to creatures that are unimaginably different from us. Even if they are our descendants they will not be 'human' as we understand it.

    92. Re:Won't happen by approachingZero+ · · Score: 0

      Thank you. Some people are scum, but all in all people are pretty neat.

      --
      'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
    93. Re:Won't happen by alexander_686 · · Score: 1

      You kind of hit on the head what I was trying to say. There is a difference in having the technology and knowing how to use it. The 1980s was when GUIs, network computers, and the internet – just to name the few were combined effectively. All of these technologies existed before but it was how they were combined that unleashed the massive productivity gains.

    94. Re:Won't happen by similar_name · · Score: 1
      tl;dr - Population growth is a good thing. Necessity is the mother of invention. Knowledge is the resource for invention.

      We tend to run at capacity only in certain locations and generally it's more a problem of social structure than a lack of resources. So there are generally wars going on somewhere. Even so, war can have the tendency to actually increase populations in the long run. Baby booms are common at the end of wars. Wars don't tend to decrease libido.

      Personally, and contrary to everyone I've ever met I think population growth is a good thing. I have not thought about this lightly either. In the end, all resources are a matter of energy, knowledge and need. Whether it's energy to desalinate water, energy for food production and distribution, or energy to make take a previously valuable metal like aluminum and make it ubiquitous.

      Concerns over energy are tempered in the long run with the knowledge that not only does more energy from the Sun fall on the Earth than we can use for the foreseeable future, but the percentage that falls on the Earth is negligible compared to the Sun's total energy output. While it may be dirty we also have plenty of coal and as well as natural gas to keep our energy production up for a while. The advantage of being human is that our minds have always been our best resource.

      There are a few quotes from this page that reflect this has been a concern of people for thousands of years.

      Confucius (551 – 479 BC) wrote that, “excessive (population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”

      I recognize that there can be periods of ups and downs and that local populations can vary a lot. I just can't escape that 200 years ago, no one would have believed that the Earth could hold 7 billion people. Yet, here we are. Our growth is a reflection of our technology. The summary states Africa's current population at 1.1 billion. China and India each have as many people. Famine isn't the result of the population. Shouldn't be resources either as Japan doesn't suffer even though Japan has 127 million people itself. It just comes down to a foundation of knowledge. Then necessity can yield solutions.

      When the day finally comes that human beings have bent the entire biosphere of Earth towards our needs then I will agree the Earth can hold no more. I also assume, by then, we would have the means to colonize other bodies in the Solar System.

    95. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Reverend Malthus wrote the same in 1798 in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", and was wrong then. Malthusian predictions have been wrong ever since.

      Malthusian predictions assume a model of exponential growth. Logistic growth (still a simple model) is a better model, but that predicted population peaking sometime in the last century. Of course, it didn't predict the Haber process being discovered. That directly changed the possible peak to sometime in this century.

    96. Re:Won't happen by j-beda · · Score: 2

      Err, did you just try to prove the research wrong by quoting from the numbers that the research proved wrong? Here's a clue: those numbers on wikipedia are wrong. That's what the article is about.

      I realise it's tradition not to read the article, but to completely ignore the point of even the summary seems excessive, no?

      OK, I'll try to do this as disdainfully as the AC:

      Err, did you just try to claim that "the research" on future trends "proved wrong" historical demographics data? Here's a clue: those numbers quoted on the historical population and its growth rate were not questioned by the UN/UW research. That's not what the article is about.

      I realize it's a tradition not to understand anyone's comments, but to completely fail to understand that even the summary is talking about projections while my comments were talking about historical demographics seem excessive, no?

      The research did not prove that the Wikipedia numbers are wrong. Nobody has questioned the current and historical numbers, all the research quoted in the article was about possible future trends. The Wikipedia numbers quoted were all historical, and contradict the assertion that the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate. The population has been increasing at a decelerating rate since 1963, when the rate of increase was the highest. The current world population growth rate is about 1%, which has a doubling time of a bit less than 77 years, and over the 87 years till 2100 would bring us to (1.01)^87 = 2.377 times the current population (resulting in a population of about 16.6 billion). Thus to reach 11 billion, the average growth rate will need to be LESS than 1%

      Thus the UN/UW article is in no way asserting that the population has been increasing at an accelerating rate, and in fact require that the growth rate decrease from its present 1% growth rate in order to match the numbers that they arrive at.

    97. Re:Won't happen by khallow · · Score: 1

      Technology hasn't yet stopped us from consuming natural resources faster than the Earth can replace them.

      You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of technology. It's primary use isn't to stop us from doing things, but enable us to do things. For example, we're developed technologies that allow us to consume those natural resources multiple times (that is, various forms of recycling and reuse).

    98. Re:Won't happen by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      Unless we can support that much life with food, water and other resources, war for diminishing resources will wipe out enough population before we even get close to that.

      Reverend Malthus wrote the same in 1798 in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", and was wrong then. Malthusian predictions have been wrong ever since.

      Yet another person who has no idea what Malthus wrote.

      In that 100 plus page work he basically simply stated that population growth was generally restricted by available resources, and that it tended to increase to the limit of those resources ("Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, and subsistence for man in an arithmetical ratio").

      This is not only not wrong, it is without question a correct statement of affairs.

      Indeed until quite recently (about 1950 in fact) the amount of food that could be produced by a hectare of land had been essentially unchanged since ancient times. Small increases had been obtained by better agricultural practices but we aren't talking about even a doubling of productivity in 2000 years.

      Increases in population until the start of the Green Revolution (an advance in scientific plant breeding) had been obtained by putting more land under production (that arithmetic increase thing Malthus mentioned).

      Since that time we have had a true revolution in food production, with productivity increasing several-fold, and it still continues.

      Here take a look: http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    99. Re:Won't happen by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      He will be correct if and when the population stops growing due to lack of resources.

      Which means he has been right almost everywhere through nearly all of human history

      The escape from resource limits has been quite recent in most places (less than a century).

      He will finally be completely wrong if and when the population stops growing due to prosperity and educated females.

      This is the one dramatic change in human ecology that will prevent the resource limit from eventually being reached again, although there are limited regions (e.g Rwanda) where the resource limit has again been hit already.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    100. Re:Won't happen by the+phantom · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I am honestly more concerned with the attitude upthread. That is, it bothers me that people are so callous and lacking in empathy that they would actively hope that billions die in misery. This particular rationalization was the straw that broke the camel's back.

    101. Re:Won't happen by DaviDrahkar · · Score: 2

      Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/605/

    102. Re:Won't happen by lgw · · Score: 1

      There has been plenty of progress over the centuries both in yield per acre (hectare? how can I take anyone seriously when they don't even use the furlong-firkin-fortnight system of measure?) and in the manpower required to grow and harvest enough food for each person to eat. Crop rotation made a huge difference, and went through several advancements, from leaving fields fallow to discovering the magic of legumes. Metal plows, oxen, and the horse collar each made a difference in productivity.

      Malthus was writing just as major breakthroughs in the manpower needed to work the fields were happening - the industrial revolution went hand and hand with freeing up labor from the fields.

      It's hard to find records of any culture (that had the technology to keep it's own written history) that had sustained starvation not caused by the local rulers - either armies burning/destroying/withholding crops or the nation exporting food while people were starving (e.g., the Irish potato famine).

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    103. Re:Won't happen by Pinhedd · · Score: 1

      We are massively overtaxing our planet as is with only 7 billion people on it.

      The more we tax the environment, the more damage will be caused in the long run and eventually humanity will suffer as a result. Decreasing birth rates alone is not sufficient, we need to decrease the entire population.

      If we cannot sustain 7 billion people, then we cannot sustain 11 billion people.

    104. Re:Won't happen by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      "Clearly something has to give"

      And so that means lower standards of living, water, food going forward if we keep increasing the population.

      They've all dropped so much in my lifetime that it's astonishing and yet almost noone seems to notice or complain. Things that used to be so plentiful that they were free are now charged for.

      Things that used to be available the public are now available only by reservations a year in advance and on top of that sometimes you have to pay 40 bucks or more.

      In only 40 years the decline has been tremendous. I can't imagine what it will be like in another 40 years.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    105. Re:Won't happen by Eugriped3z · · Score: 1

      I'm amazed at how simplistic the UN 'report' seems to be. They don't begin to mirror the complexity of the modeling that was begun by MIT for the Club of Rome, beginning in the early 1970's. The report that was commissioned then, called The Limits to Growth, attempted to take into consideration those factors that relate to human population growth such as: climate, agricultural productivity, natural resource availability (particularly potable water and arable land), marginal costs of resource extraction (accounting for the fact that man his already begun to exhaust the most easily obtained sources of materials and energy). It's obvious that economics, education, culture and geopolitics also play rolls in determining growth and population, as do disease and technological advancement, but extrapolating future population growth rates based on simple mathematics, in the absence of some attempt to factor in the detriment we do collectively to the global environment and it's ability to sustain indefinite and increasing rates of consumption seems irresponsible. As does the reporting that would allow one to consider such gibberish without due consideration for the quality of life. Particularly when business clamors for increased opportunity for production and consumption based on some idealized notion of western industrial lifestyles as the likely model for the developing world. Malthus and the Ehrlichs may have been ahead of their time and presented by the critics as doomsayers, but they are worth listening to, given that man has recently succeeded in populating the vast majority of easily and economically inhabitable niches in the biosphere and it's our population's energetics and habitat competition that are accelerating extinction rates beyond anything heretofore evidenced in paleontology.

    106. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Finite energy" need not be a concern. On some days, if you get out of mom's basement for a bit and look up, you'll notice a big yellow firey ball in the sky. They say it should be able to provide for all our energy needs.

    107. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reverend Malthus wrote the same in 1798 in "An Essay on the Principle of Population", and was wrong then. Malthusian predictions have been wrong ever since.

      The only reason why Malthus was wrong was the exploitation of the Americas, which have provided western civilization with an almost limitless amount of resources. These resources fueled the industrial revolutions which led to the discovery of fossil fuels. We are not going to find a "second Earth" (which is what America was, essentialy) or a source of energy comparable to oil/gas today.

    108. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Population growth is not fueld by oil

      That idea is completely retarded.

      There is something called the Haber-Bosch process. Look it up. It's the reason why you and I are even alive today.

    109. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, people are neat. Especially women. Particularly the nubile ones. They're great for fucking. Don't like faggots, though. Faggots must die.

    110. Re:Won't happen by Alioth · · Score: 1

      Malthus will eventually be right. Growth (population, economics, any growth) cannot continue infinitely. At some point there is a certain amount of people and a certain amount of energy use that the Earth can sustain. The current population is not sustainable with current technology because we require depleting, non renewable resources to keep everyone going. It's probable that the current population can be sustained renewably, but even so, eventually there is an upper bound on what the earth can sustainably support. Indeed, there is an upper bound on what the entire solar system can support (which is very, very large) but we have to get to the point where we have the technology to do that BEFORE we exceed what the earth can support.

    111. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eventually, the universe will reach heat death where all useful energy has been used.

      So?

    112. Re:Won't happen by mcvos · · Score: 1

      I believe we're currently producing enough food for 10 billion people. (Of course we're not actually feeding it to people, we're feeding it to cattle.) With the right choices, food and water shouldn't be the problem here (though making the right choices in itself probably would be). As for other resources, it depends on the resources everybody needs. If all 11 billion of them want big SUVs and lots of steak, then it's not going to work.

    113. Re:Won't happen by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Maltus wasn't talking about local crop/political failures and local famine.

      He was talking large scale perpetual famine due to excessive population. He was wrong up to now.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    114. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you kidding? Chicks dig babies.

    115. Re:Won't happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At current growth rates, the weight of humans would equal the weight of the planet in 500 years.

      Earth Mass is 5.97219 × 10^24 kg
      Let's assume in 500 years every human would weight 100kg.
      To weigh as much as Earth, there should be 5.97219 × 10^22 fat people. That's 59 721 000 000 000 000 000 000.
      59721 billions billions people.
      It seems unlikely that in 500 years we'll go from 7 billion to that.

    116. Re:Won't happen by stevehadd · · Score: 1

      But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes Its no very helpful to say eventually over population will sort itself out. The point of these sorts of reports is want to avoid all the misery that usually accompanies systems balancing themselves "naturally".

  4. 30-Year Projections Are Useless by powermung · · Score: 3, Insightful

    let alone 86+ years

    1. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by Synerg1y · · Score: 1

      Still makes a catchy headline though.

    2. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by Alomex · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually 30 year projections when it comes to population are pretty accurate as the people who will be having children in thirty years are already born and hence their number is exact, all that is missing is the reproduction rate, which moves slowly.

      This is a common mistake by people who are not familiar with population projections. Thirty year time spans are "short" when it comes to population whereas they are absurdly long for almost anything else.

    3. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by charlesbakerharris · · Score: 1

      30 years from now, people will still hate EA for Simcity 5. THERE! I said it!

    4. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That assumes there are no epidemics, wars, economic depressions, or other fluctuations. Extrapolating population from a growth rate is trivial when you assume stability, but rather useless. So far, MAD and the CDC/WHO have kept these factors under control, but that's historically unprecedented, we could easily have another 1918 flu or world war which kills 10%+ of the population. (Likely much more given the recent lull, essentially like how Yellowstone kept putting out small forest fires which later proved disastrous.) Given the predictions of climatologists and the predictable social/economic/military reaction, I would be very surprised if the next 50 years are as stable as the last. (Or, if you prefer another flavor of destruction, China's gender skew, the waning cheap oil reserves, growing dissent with the near-hegemonous US government, globalization, the old regime being incompatible with the information age, or a hundred other arguries I'm forgetting.)

    5. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by Alomex · · Score: 4, Informative

      That assumes there are no epidemics, wars, economic depressions, or other fluctuations.

      No, it doesn't. All those have a modest impact on the combined population of the world. I.e. save a global pandemic or thermo-nuclear world war III, those figures will come to pass.

      we could easily have another 1918 flu

      Easily as in "it hasn't happened in 100 years and the probability is now ever lower with all the latest medical advances"

      or world war which kills 10%+ of the population.

      WWII, the deadliest global war ever killed 2.5% of the population.

    6. Re:30-Year Projections Are Useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are spot on except the last line/assumption you made. Just because the dealiest war only took out 2.5% doesn't preclude us kickin it up a notch. We are America. FUCK YEAH!

  5. not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I should show this to a elderly friend of mine who is absolutely certain that the entire threat from population growth is entirely due to the horrible white races he is part of.

    But, in the long run, don't worry about it. The AIDS retrovirus didn't curtail population growth the way it was expected, the next manufactured plague will be more successful. How do you think that they can reach a sustainable population by 2100 without a global pandemic?

    1. Re:not a problem by Holi · · Score: 1

      Manufactured plague please, Nature is far more creative then we could ever be.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    2. Re:not a problem by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 1

      ...elderly friend of mine who is absolutely certain that the entire threat from population growth is entirely due to the horrible white races he is part of.

      Technically he is has a point. There is a direct, almost perfect correlation between poverty and population growth. Given that much of the poverty on an international scale is due to the fact that the more developed nations do nothing to cooperate with furthering world development, and in many cases actually work to prevent it, there is certainly some blame to be placed there.

    3. Re:not a problem by crakbone · · Score: 1

      "do nothing to cooperate with furthering world development" Just because a nation is developed does not automatically mean it owes other countries anything. Just because you work really hard to acquire something does not mean it should be carved up and given to anyone that did not work for it. As well I think you will find the majority of issues in those areas are because local warlords prefer the status quo. We can ship all the grain, water filters, medicines we can manufacture down there and it will not do an once of good if it rots in warehouses at shipping yards.

    4. Re:not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And I really do hope that the next pandemic is of natural origin. Being so it would hopefully cut a swath through all classes, nationalities, religions, taking a fair share form every group. HOWEVER, this would put the rich and power elite in danger of no longer existing and they won't have that SO the answer is to have a manufactured plague with select individuals pre-immunized before the release.

      It makes one wonder why the executive, house and judiciary are not required to take part in Obamacare. They have their own medical plans and infrastructure. I'd bet dollars to donuts that each country has a similar arrangement where the governed have one medical system while the governors have another.

    5. Re:not a problem by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Just because a country is developed means: automatically it owes quite a lot to the less developed world.
      *We* exploitet those countries the previous 400 years.
      *We* made sure they get ruled by kings, dictators etc.
      *We* locked them down by setting up taxes and tarrifs when they started to become a competition
      *We* bombed them back into the stone age when they joined the eastern/communism block.

      Yes, you are right, we can not fight against the local warlords we set up there. The warlords there would not exist if we had not exploited and manipulated those countries for half a millenia.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    6. Re:not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're talking about economic effects and he's just talking about babies. His simple claim is that there are more white people in the world having more babies than any other group or race. To be even more blunt, that the white race will eventually drown out the rest of the races of the world in a sea of white skinned bodies. Of course, he's from a generation when 9 kid families were not uncommon. Now they seem uncommon enough that they have reality shows about them.

    7. Re:not a problem by crakbone · · Score: 1

      Giving something to someone who does not feel they have earned it results in waste, greed, and dependence. If people want to be free they need to fight for it. They need to truly learn the value of freedom and why it costs so much to keep. It cannot just be handed to them or the next warlord, dictator or emperor will just take it right back again. We had to strive and fight against the exploitation against our country, We made sure we were not ruled by kings, We fought with blood sweat and tears against the tariffs, taxes levied against us. And we fought tooth and nail to control our fate. We made and created a country where it was safe to innovate, where a person could come and setup a new life free from the artificial prejudices and religious biases of other countries. And we became great because of that. We would not be who we are if we would have just sat back and waited for France or Germany to bail us out.

    8. Re:not a problem by Internetuser1248 · · Score: 1

      That is a bullshit excuse for greedy exploitation and you know it. I could lock a 5 year old girl in my basement and make the same argument. The world isn't asking the US to bail them out it is asking the US to stop fucking everything up. This was already explained in the post you replied to which you failed to comprehend though so I don't know why I am bothering to repeat it.

    9. Re:not a problem by crakbone · · Score: 1

      My statement was directed at "do nothing to cooperate with furthering world development" Personally I wish the US would stop meddling with the rest of the planet. I have always voted in that direction and will continue. The US has no reason to do it and it does cause problems. But I do not feel obligated to stand up for people that will not a least try to help themselves. And I do not feel obligated to give what I work for to anyone else simple because they didn't work for anything. I won't give money to the guy at the street corner with the sign ignoring every charitable organization in the city that would love to help him. But I will give it to the single mom that is having a hard time making it to work because her car broke.

  6. Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    “These new findings show that we need to renew policies, such as increasing access to family planning and expanding education for girls, to address rapid population growth in Africa,” Raftery said.

    Good luck with that.

    For one, the imperialistic arrogance of the Christian "charities" of the West will put a damper on that because it doesn't fit with their beliefs.

    1. Re:Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taxpayer funded abortion you mean because that is what family planning is. Maybe single women with no way of supporting their children should stop fucking.

    2. Re:Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taxpayer funded abortion you mean because that is what family planning is. Maybe single women with no way of supporting their children should stop fucking.

      And you should stop eating so much.

      same thing asshole.

    3. Re:Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taxpayer funded abortion you mean because that is what family planning is. Maybe single women with no way of supporting their children should stop fucking.

      I agree! Extermination!

      Heil Hitler!

    4. Re:Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe single women with no way of supporting their children should stop fucking.

      But single men can keep on fucking? Do you even know how reproduction works?

    5. Re:Good luck with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Taxpayer funded abortion you mean because that is what family planning is. Maybe single women with no way of supporting their children should stop fucking.

      Family planning is contraception, you idiot.

  7. Investment future for my kids / grandkids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think I better open up a trust account for them that'll be heavily invested in the Soylent Green company.

  8. Population Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Distribute free game consoles to the male of the species.

    1. Re:Population Control by cffrost · · Score: 1

      Distribute free game consoles to the male of the species.

      I couldn't locate the SMBC comic that illustrates this proposal, but I did find another one that's on-topic.

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  9. Not a problem here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's ok. Thanks to abortion, homosexuality, and selfishness there will be plenty of room here.

    1. Re:Not a problem here by Holi · · Score: 1

      Selfishness? No, Selfishness is having too many kids, it's rather selfless to not reproduce.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    2. Re:Not a problem here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just export these 3 to China, India, Africa and the Muslim empire, and we can start a population implosion similar to the one going on in Russia

    3. Re:Not a problem here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That all depends on your perspective. When you're so self absorbed that you can't give of your time and effort to raise a child then yes that's selfish, but it would be more so to have children in spite of that. However, when one endeavors to raise a child up selflessly imparting wisdom, compassion, and a selfless attitude it can have a very positive impact in our world.

    4. Re:Not a problem here by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 2

      Selfishness? No, Selfishness is having too many kids, it's rather selfless to not reproduce.

      Selfishness is not having kids but expecting that you're going to be cared for by other peoples kids. It's selfishness when it's done by the individual, and it's selfish when it's done as an "immigration" policy. Face it. We, as a culture, transformed sex into a sport, and now we survive by stealing other peoples children. It's worst in North America... this continent is where genetic material comes to die.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    5. Re:Not a problem here by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      The "Social Security is stealing" argument.

      Wonderful.

    6. Re:Not a problem here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I don't agree with the GP, and it's somewhat of a large tangent to take, if as a country the US is not increasing in population generation over generation, how will Social Security, which is setup the same as a Ponzi Scheme using new generations as investers, how do we expect for SS to stay solvent when we're not introducing enough new investers ??

      This is not a "SS is bad" or any other kind of political statement, I really want to know how we could expect the program to work.

    7. Re:Not a problem here by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      Many people I know who do not have kids of their own are nonetheless highly generous in helping the next generation. They act as teachers, mentors, caretakers, role models for many children. Selfish is using not having your own kids as an excuse for not paying to support schools, activities, and healthy environments for other people's kids. As an aspiring future member of the elderly generation, I'd much rather be cared for by fewer young'uns who received a better upbringing (more personal attention and access to resources for growth), than by more young'uns who've spent their whole miserable life squabbling with each other for scarce resources.

    8. Re:Not a problem here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We, as a culture, transformed sex into a sport, and now we survive by stealing other peoples children

      You have now begun yet another never-ending series of confessions to making up things that you want to be true. Because, as you desperately wish you weren't aware, immigration is not "stealing" in any possible sense. But I guess you can just add that to the list.

      You will now commence with the impotent tantrums. As you always do.

  10. Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by intermodal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I fully expect this comments section to be full of "but what about all the resources we need for..." fears about "overpopulation". Where there's a will, there's a way. The zero population growth people would have us believe that the numbers are very different from what they really are, but the world can produce a lot more food than we do, and with minimal changes, it could be greatly increased.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    1. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Food is not all that is needed. Education, a _perspective_, freedom, clean water, health care etc. are not likely to be available to most of these people. And even food is doubtful. This planet is already massively over-populated.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Holi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Food sure, but water? No desalinization is expensive and we already have water problems without a solution here in the First World. Imagine how much more trouble it causes the 3rd World.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    3. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      NO its not, we are jsut assholes when it comes to distribution. We could EASILY feed, clothe and shelter every human on the planet if we abolished greed.

      --
      Good-bye
    4. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol good luck with that. Greed is the only thing that holds half of our society together. It drives people to work and contribute. If you think people would farm/build/teach without greed then you need to look back at the dark ages.

    5. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by intermodal · · Score: 2

      You're saying something is presently costly, not that it's impossible or even that difficult.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    6. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by kenaaker · · Score: 1
      And exactly what is going to get all this extra food production going? Good wishes?

      If the food is going to be produced in the western economy it's going to have to be sold for enough money to cover the cost of increasingly expensive fertilizer, seed, land, labor, and fuel that mechanized agriculture uses. If it's going to be produced in the under-developed parts of the world, the productivity of the local farmers is going to have to be increased dramatically. There's no plausible mechanism for that sort of productivity increase.

      If you look at the agricultural commodity markets (in particular the price spikes), a lot of the price elasticity seems to be gone, which may be a sign that the mechanized agricultural industry is at maximum capacity. We may be only a couple of crop failures away from food rationing.

      Another indication may be the "Arab Spring" upheavals. A number of the press reports credited food riots with starting the unrest.

    7. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by intermodal · · Score: 1

      The fact that you are arguing that "this planet is already massively over-populated" tells me that discussing this with you would result in two things:
       
      You getting impassioned and irritated when I argue the definitions of the words "necessity" and "overpopulation"
       
      and
       
      Me getting frustrated when I try to explain why I don't believe your amazingly egalitarian and magnanimous but unrealistically Utopian ideas bear any particular resemblance to what it takes for a human society to exist.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    8. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by intermodal · · Score: 1

      That's an artificial barrier. I'm saying something is possible, not that the present political situation makes it simple.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    9. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Food itself is not the problem.

      The world has PLENTY of food right now.. Yet millions starve every year...

      The problem is one of logistics. How do you get ALL the food to ALL the people...

      And that's a problem that right now. We still can't solve it really. And millions starve every year...

      So 11 billion people... Yeah, you guys might wanna do something about that.. It's not a problem yet.. But give it a decade or 3 and you're gonna have a problem

    10. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by s.petry · · Score: 1

      If we had moved to sustainable living, I would agree with you. That is not what we have, and there is no push from Governments to make us cleaner.

      Instead of addressing pollution, we argue about "global warming" as if that is the root cause of our woes. It's not, but people are too stupid to see reality. Lobbyists pump money into politicians pockets to ensure that we can keep on polluting, and arguing everything except for the obvious.

      If we cleaned up, it would still take a long time for ocean dead zones to become healthy, and land to become viable for farming. That is the point where I will state that you are absolutely wrong by the way. We have screwed up enough of the planet that we can't support many more people, we lack the land and water to do so.

      Notice I didn't mention a whole lot of other resource issues we have to get resolved in order to sustain a larger populace. Things like shark fining, and herbicide/pesticide issues make the issue a whole lot more than simply claiming "we can plant more stuff."

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    11. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by s.petry · · Score: 1

      I agree with your statement, but have to point out that this is a result of teaching. We could easily become a society that teaches something else if people tried. It's hard to read "The Republic" and why it could work. More than being "hard", it requires that people in power give up their power. The people need to be compelled to force that change, and begin teaching society to be better.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    12. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You need to look in to the abyss of your soul and understand not all of us are sociopathic assholes like yourself. Please, kill yourself, before you hurt the rest of us any more.

    13. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So we can assume then that you work for free? You donate all your spare time to anyone that needs it with no benefit to yourself? Yah did not think so.

    14. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen#Research

    15. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by swb · · Score: 1

      The thing is, so many of our current problems -- climate change, environmental exploitation, pollution, energy scarcity, food costs and in many cases, political conflict are magnified greatly by large populations.

      It's really hard to see the benefit to human civilization that a global population of 8 or 10 billion brings versus 2 billion. Many of the extra 6 billion people are in poverty, live squalid lives and contribute to political instability. Those that aren't in poverty drive resource exploitation (eg, deforesting the Amazon for commercial farmland), greenhouse gas production, etc. There's really little that can be said for a world population past 1-2 billion people.

      A world with fewer people demands fewer resources. It has more space, more room for error and demands less stringent political controls to manage big populations and big population densities.

    16. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Threni · · Score: 2

      A cure for religion would be handy too.

    17. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Rhacman · · Score: 1

      You left you left out the quotation marks on "better".

      --
      Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
    18. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      stop tying your aid to anti birth control religious fairy tales then

    19. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by cognoscentus · · Score: 1

      Perhaps we could survive, but I doubt we could flourish in such a world.

    20. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Princeofcups · · Score: 2

      ...the world can produce a lot more food than we do, and with minimal changes, it could be greatly increased.

      Patently absurd, unless your definition if minimal change mean "whatever change is needed bar the consequences." The US, Europe, and Middle East were practically deforested over the last 2000 years. Thousand of species have forced to extinction. The Great Plains of the US are now a great desert. Stalin did pretty much the same thing in Russia. The great reefs of the world are on a decline and probably unrecoverable. And, what, climate change/global warming doesn't exist either? Our footprint is on the planet in a big way, and it will only get worse.

      --
      The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
    21. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by JeanCroix · · Score: 1, Funny

      Things like shark fining,

      I hardly think placing surcharges on sharks will solve sustainability issues...

    22. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

      Interesting, but the fact is that without modern fertilizers we'd already be starving from lack of food (rather than idiocy as it is right now).

      "Inorganic fertilizer use has also significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer

      So, yes, Virginia, we're overpopulated by natural standards. It's only science keeping us afloat. And that science does have consequences.

    23. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Greed is good

      -- Gordon Gekko , Wall Street (Role peerformed by Micheal Douglas)

    24. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Algae_94 · · Score: 1

      You donate all your spare time to anyone that needs it with no benefit to yourself?

      Just to play devil's advocate here. Getting paid is not the only benefit you get from doing things.

    25. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Alomex · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually desalinization is coming down in price rapidly, in part because of better osmotic processes in part because cheaper and more efficient solar energy makes it more economical (bonus: most places where water is scarce are sunny).

    26. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Fair point, and valid correction.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    27. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      And exactly what is going to get all this extra food production going? Good wishes?

      That's not just good wishes but good wishes of another 5Billion people. I'm pretty sure a couple of them will help out.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    28. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      It's okay--when we pass 7 billion, people will suddenly start acting differently than they have since the beginning of time.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    29. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Desalination now costs less than a cent per gallon:

      http://www.economist.com/news/china/21571437-removing-salt-seawater-might-help-slake-some-northern-chinas-thirst-it-comes-high

    30. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of the population increase is more than likely going to be coming from Africa, and likely be due Africa becoming more developed. It really goes hand in hand. As the continent becomes more developed, the moratality rate decreases, which makes a workforce to cultivate the huge area of land ready to be farmed. They will have more of an advantage than the western world did, as someone else in the world has already figured some of this stuff out. Their development will, and can only be self sustained for the most part, and yes, their population will increase, but they'll figure out how to deal with it and better use their resources to sustain their own population.

    31. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Since I can't detect whether or not your comment is in jest, I'll tell you to research the impact this is having on oceanic fish that humans rely on for food. Killing off predators in theory gives you more goodies, but in practice that is false. Top level predators keep other predators which we don't eat in check. Hammerhead populations would be the easiest to study, and the impact decimating these predators has had on other oceanic fish is easy to find.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    32. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by kenaaker · · Score: 1
      I believe that most people in the world are good and generally trustworthy. I think that most of them will help, if they can. From what I can see, their ability to help is severely limited. Mostly by the laws of physics, mathematics and unintended consequences. There is a limited amount of arable land. There is a limited amount of water. There is a limited amount of energy to use to support a civilization. As a civilization, we don't know exactly where we are with respect to the hard limits, but there are numerous indications that we've exceeded some of the limits.

      To just wishfully assume that we'll pull some rabbit out of the hat and push all those limits back just when we need to, frightens me. It frightens me because I think it stops people from thinking about the hard alternatives that might avert the die-off.

      That's some of my own wishful thinking too. I wish that we could avoid a major die-off. But, given our history so far. I don't see civilization acquiring enough wisdom, selflessness, or resources to avoid it.

    33. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by ChainedFei · · Score: 1

      And what about when the world is consuming trillions of gallons of Water from the oceans? I'm sure the oceans becoming saltier over time (As a result of removal of clean water from the system as well as salts/other chemicals being added from all the pissing people, cows and pigs will be doing with all the readily available water) isn't going to cause any problems.

      Oh, wait, no, I mean the other thing.

      Systems are not closed, coming up with a solution that makes consumption easier doesn't actually solve problems down the road.

    34. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No desalinization is expensive and we already have water problems without a solution here in the First World.

      I did not realize that dehydration was such a common cause of death. Oh, you meant fresh water for the lawn. Well let me get off of it then.

    35. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fearmongering is one word for it.

      Reality is another.

      The UK is currently experiencing the wettest season on record, and certainly one of the coldest. Winter basically hasn't gone away.

      "Normally we export around 2.5m tonnes of wheat but this year we expect to have to import 2.5m tonnes," said Charlotte Garbutt, a senior analyst at the industry-financed Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. "The crop that came through the winter has struggled and is patchy and variable. The area of wheat grown this year has been much smaller."

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/12/farmers-fail-weather-wheat-crop

      It's not going to get better. Food prices are already significantly higher than they were a couple of years ago. With starvation, always, disease. And people are already very poor in terms of health and resistance to illness, what with subsisting on grains for most of their caloric intake.

      I seriously doubt we'll reach 10 billion. I suspect we're going to drop to just a few million before all is said and done. Brace yourself. It's happening, right now in real time.

      And it's not AGW, either. Look to the skies. Comets and comet dust are part of the picture. Ice age time!

    36. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your logic is sound, but I think you're underestimating the volume of the Earth's oceans. The total volume of the oceans is roughly 1.3×10^21 L. Daily water use by a population of 11 billion people would be about 350×10^9 L (3.7 L/day for males, 2.7 L/day for females, Wikipedia). That's a daily draw of 0.0000000003% of the ocean's water. You won't be changing salt concentrations considerably by changing the volume that little.

    37. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by ChainedFei · · Score: 1

      Multiplying the Daily water useage into a year, then multiplying it out to an average 70 year lifespan gives 0.000007665

      Which is still only 7/1,000,000 of a change in value, but that's assuming consumption and useage levels remain the same and Jevon's Paradox doesn't have a significant rebound from the drop in cost of desalinization.

    38. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by chihowa · · Score: 1

      Well, that's also assuming that the water just goes away when a human drinks it, which it doesn't. The water cycle is pretty fast and most of that water will end up back in the ocean long before the average human lifespan.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    39. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by ChainedFei · · Score: 1

      My initial statement did not presume that the water disappeared, but water processed through biological systems pick up contaminants.

      Also, I'm uncertain whether Omestes' original calculation was based only on consumption of drinking water per individual and was ignoring the obvious externalities of manufacturing usage of water per annum. I imagine if we included all manufacturing and industrial useages of water, the number is likely to be higher.

      I am, of course, assuming that Omestes' was not including these latter factors.

    40. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by camperdave · · Score: 1

      Desalinization is as expensive as Saran Wrap.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    41. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by losfromla · · Score: 1

      I should have saved my modpoints for this

      --
      Only I can judge you.
    42. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by khallow · · Score: 1

      My initial statement did not presume that the water disappeared, but water processed through biological systems pick up contaminants.

      That ocean water has already been through a vast amount of biological systems whose extent is far greater than humanity probably can be on Earth (by mass). Where's those "contaminants"?

    43. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Problem with that: We cannot abolish greed. You argument is bogus. You could just as well have said "We could feed everybody if we had enough food."

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    44. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      To that I can only answer with "huh?"

      But since you already know what I am going to think, there is no worth in talking to you in the first place, so it does not matter that you do not make any sense.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    45. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Yes, indeed. That would likely deal with the overpopulation and a host of other problems.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    46. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by intermodal · · Score: 1

      To that I can only answer with "huh?"

      But since you already know what I am going to think, there is no worth in talking to you in the first place, so it does not matter that you do not make any sense.

      I find it reassuring that you think so.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    47. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You are entirely welcome to your false sense of security.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    48. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by JeanCroix · · Score: 1

      I was just having a bit of fun with your apparent typo - I assume you meant "finning," not "fining"...

    49. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Probably, but the dictionary only contains the word "fining" so I probably meant "fin'ing" or such? Or perhaps the dictionary needs major updates?

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    50. Re:Fearmongering in 3...2...1... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      They could even be evil and greedy. They are still going to put their effort into the market either by creating demand or providing supplies.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  11. weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So over the next 90 year, 3 of the only 4 new billion people will be from one sixth of the planet? I would like to see details before believing that.

  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. Re:Hey people... by gweihir · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Indeed. They seem hell-bound to reestablish starvation and sickness as the main means of population control.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  14. Or... by rossdee · · Score: 1

    Climate change could cause drought and famine in many 3rd world countries where most of the growth is happening, and we end up with half that population

    1. Re:Or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the problem solves itself, COOL!!!

    2. Re:Or... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      Or it could cause heavy rainfall and refertilization of aired land.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  15. Re:Condoms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We can't have that, how else will the church get a fresh supply of gullible?

  16. Well Done Bob Geldof by lobiusmoop · · Score: 0

    Looks like Live Aid is proving to be a fucking disaster over the long term.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    1. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by Graydyn+Young · · Score: 1

      If your suggesting that the solution to overpopulation is people starving to death, than please, you first.

    2. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it may have been more successful but he didn't like mondays.

    3. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by AmazingRuss · · Score: 1

      What happened when we fed them in the 80s?

      They made twice as many starving people.

      Feeding them resulted in even MORE people starving.

    4. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a) our population continues to increase exponentially forever
      b) our population does not continue to increase exponentially forever

      Unfortunately the permutations under (b) involve a lot of people dying for lots of reasons, and that solution is likely to find us.

    5. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by lobiusmoop · · Score: 1

      Not at all, but it turns out the solution is not just providing food aid either. Something is very wrong somewhere. And sorry for swears in OP, but overpopulation is my hot button.

      --
      "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    6. Re:Well Done Bob Geldof by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell me why!

  17. Re:Condoms by X0563511 · · Score: 1

    Not much. Most of that population growth comes from other areas, like China or India.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  18. And if every one of those 11 billion... by Picass0 · · Score: 1

    ...gave Dr. Evil a million dollars he'd have (da daaa dadada dadada) 11 MILLION BILLION DOLLARS!!!!

    Muahahaaha! Muahahaha!!!!

  19. Space Age by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hopefully before that happens, the space age of humanity will be fully active and we will be out mining space and have space colonies and so on.
    The latter is a bit optimistic, former is very realistic.

    As more people realize the potential benefits of space mining, more and more companies will likely form.
    The current companies will become the framework for these secondary companies to get even further in to space and gather even more resources to realistically allow for creating space colonies.
    That likely won't happen until 2150 onwards, being semi realistic in terms of how fast society moves now.

    I know we still war even now over petty shit, but I hope the larger ones involved will stick to wanting to rule the world with their resource and monetary wealth rather than military strength.
    So far everyone seems to be sticking to it, but who knows that could happen, sometimes people snap.

  20. Likely a conservative estimate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As the quality of life improves in Africa through the heroic efforts of a long-suffering population, its population will explode. Remember how everyone claims China's the next superpower? The African Union will crush them in 100 years. Let's not forget that Africa is the source of a staggeringly large proportion of the world's resources -- including oil, gold, and diamonds (aka the world's three biggest stores of wealth). It is relations with Africa, not China, which will define the geopolitical landscape in 2100, which puts an interesting perspective on the reasons behind much of the turmoil on the continent.

    (Assuming we aren't all dead due to nuclear war first.)

  21. but wait by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    Did they factor in the Mars population though? You obviously have to subtract that.

  22. Earth to Humans: Failure to Launch? by rsborg · · Score: 1

    We need a Paula. Vulcans? Hell, I'd take Vogons at this point.

    Paula: Look, many young men who should be able to move out, simply can't. It's called "failure to launch". And that's where I come in. Young men develop self-esteem best during a romantic relationship, so I simulate one. We have a memorable meeting. We get to know each other over a few casual meals, he helps me through an emotional crisis, then I meet his friends, if he has any... Then I let him teach me something... But the bottom line is, he bonds with me. He lets go of you. He moves out.

    --
    Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  23. Re:Hey people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have had a vasectomy and have no kids, and I don't find my excessive fucking to be causing very many problems.

  24. 10 billion by ichthus · · Score: 1

    Or, it could peak at 10 billion, with little to no ill effect.

    --
    sig: sauer
  25. The other white meat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We'll start eating each other long before 2100. I mean, we'll have to right? The world's gotta eat something.

    I predict by 2100 we may even be on the endangered list. Only the juiciest and fattiest (and that good marbled kind of fat not the big blobs of American fat) members of society will be allowed to breed, I mean reproduce. Garlic butter may be hard to come by.

  26. World population to reach 2 billion by 2100! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With oil gone in ~2038-2042 and no expected replacement for ~100 years after that, the inability to grow and move food may change a lot of "In the year 2050 xxx!" predictions.
    Not to mention the impact of the current 9 billion people have on the enviro may make living very different in the next 80 years.

    "Science will save us!" is just as good as "God will save us!".

    Lets face it, I make a solar farm that supplies all of the world, I still have the byproducts of all the people to deal with.

  27. Don't Trust Long Term Predictions by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

    I wouldn't put much faith in long term predictions. 2100 is 87 years away. 87 years ago, it was 1926. In 1927, the world's population reached 2 billion (up from 1 billion in 1804). Had they made a prediction then, they would have likely guessed that we'd hit 3 billion by 2049. Maybe 4 billion if they thought we were doubling population numbers. In addition, if someone from 1926 tried predicting what the technology of 2013 would be like, I highly doubt they'd be anywhere close.

    My prediction? In 87 years, the world will look in many ways the same and in many ways vastly different in ways that I couldn't begin to imagine at this point.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    1. Re:Don't Trust Long Term Predictions by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 0

      Since Malthus died in 1834, I think your guess about population predictions would probably be wrong about population predictions.

      I agree on the technology- tho H.G. Wells made some interesting predictions about social changes (birth control, suburbs, etc.).

      If you mean the general population- perhaps you are correct. They are underestimating the current problems.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  28. I'll be dead by then... by Holammer · · Score: 1

    So I'm doing my part!

  29. Re:Hey people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    spackling your mom's basement before and after the vasectomy didn't raise the population either. win - win!

  30. That scene keeps playing over and over in my head by Lucas123 · · Score: 1
  31. Bwahahahahaha!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Africa??? You've got to be kidding. Africa may have shitloads of natural resources, but unfortunately is also full of Africans, who have proven repeatedly over and over again and again... (even when under domination of white European colonial imperialists who lifted them to the highest reaches of economic prosperity they ever reached in their entire history, then they fell swiftly and greatly to worse status than before when they pushed their white overlords out of power and out of their lands), that they are fundamentally incapable of achieving a self-generated and self-sustained/growing economic engine of any kind. No sirs, they have always been, as a whole, more interested in localized greed, power and killing each other in tribal fashion for instant gratification of satisfying those appetites and cannot see much of anything beyond that.

    I predict this will be immediately moderated troll or flamebait, but you have to admit it is true.

  32. Really? by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    Not if Carbon Dioxide has anything to say about it.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
  33. The Daleks will help control the population growth by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!

  34. 2100? by EvilSS · · Score: 1

    Well, I'll do my part and die sometime between now and then, so put me down for -1.

    --
    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  35. Easy fix by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 2

    Free software engineering degrees. The massive increase in geek population will no doubt cause reproduction rates to plummet. Throw in government-subsidized WoW accounts and we'll have negative population growth in 4 years tops!

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
  36. Malthusian Horror Fantasies by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Predictions of Malthusian nightmares rarely seem to take birth control into account. We should keep in mind that effective hormonal birth control has only been widely available in the West since the seventies. In that short (yes, very short) amount of time it had to become both cheap enough and socially acceptable enough to make a demographic dent. We're only beginning to see the effects but even so 48% of the world's population lives in countries with sub-replacement fertility rates. Immigration props up most of the developed world demographically, but even so countries with some of the most advanced economies, like Germany and Japan, are experiencing a contraction of their populations. Indeed the latter, with its aversion to immigration, faces demographic collapse.

    There's a lot of reason to be concerned about pressure of resources as the developing world grows and developing economies advance. But much of the increased pressure is caused by people taking on aspects of Western life--consumerism, purchase of electronic conveniences which become apparent necessities (cell phone, computers, etc), and the increasing use of cars. But aside from stable polities, few things make life more comfortable in the West than birth control. If there was a bit of lag time, and indeed a small amount, before widespread adoption of birth control in the West would make a demographic difference, why should we not expect developing countries to follow suit shortly?

    1. Re:Malthusian Horror Fantasies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If there was a bit of lag time, and indeed a small amount, before widespread adoption of birth control in the West would make a demographic difference, why should we not expect developing countries to follow suit shortly?

      Adoption of birth control in the West is somewhat limited to certain subsets of the population though. Predictably, while birth rates among those populations are decreasing, both rates among the non-birth control subsets are not decreasing. Religion has no small part to play in this and I suspect this effect will come into play throughout the developing world, too.

      The non-birth control users in the West are typically not of the more affluent subsets of the population. I suspect a similar correlation exists world-wide when comparing developed and developing countries, too.

    2. Re:Malthusian Horror Fantasies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to dismiss the importance of hormonal birth control, but it should be noted that the effectiveness of birth control is a matter of degree. Without effective birth control, people will use less effective methods and still tend to have a number of children inversely proportional to their chance of surviving to adulthood. The point being that good nutrition and good medicine counterintuitively are more effective than good birth control at lowering population growth.

    3. Re:Malthusian Horror Fantasies by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 1

      Religion has no small part to play in this and I suspect this effect will come into play throughout the developing world, too.

      I'm afraid I must disagree. Religion in the West has a relatively small part to play in people's reproductive choices. A slim majority of Americans identify as Protestant and it has been some time since the major traditional Protestant denominations cared at all about contraception. Where one would expect religion to make a difference, among the ~24% of Americans who identify as Catholic, it barely has a noticeable effect. 89% of American Catholics, compared to 90% of non-Catholics, say the use of birth control is morally acceptable. Contrary to the stereotypes, it really isn't a practical issue for most Catholics (and this in contradiction to the teaching of their religion).

      Of course I do not mean to indicate that is religion irrelevant in guiding behavior. It certainly can be a powerful motivator. But religion is most effective within a consonant cultural context, where religious expectations are reinforced by societal norms. In the West, religion has become largely a question of private, personal choice and as such it has less power to guide behavior. This, like the dissolution of traditional family structures, is a predictable effect of the present capitalism.

      The non-birth control users in the West are typically not of the more affluent subsets of the population. I suspect a similar correlation exists world-wide when comparing developed and developing countries, too.

      Here I think you're quite right. But this was largely my point. The most affluent classes in the West tend to have below-replace-level birthrates. The poorer tend to have higher birthrates and to use contraception less. This is analogous to the situation among countries. Wealthier, industrialized nations have lower fertility rates while the poorer countries have higher fertility rates. But unlike the mass of relatively poor classes in the industrialized West, future generations in developing economies (esp. the BRICS) are likely to be at least somewhat better off than their forebears. Likewise, I would argue, we can expect an increasing number in those countries to adopt a Western-style approach to child rearing--where the wealthier have ever fewer children while through childbearing the poorer stave off both demographic collapse and economic collapse by providing a labor pool.

    4. Re:Malthusian Horror Fantasies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " Immigration props up most of the developed world demographically"

      I think you meant to say "white countries", not "developed world"...
      Gee... I wonder why it's the WHITE countries which are "developed", but not the non-white ones...

      Non-white immigration is NOT "propping up" white countries, it's DESTROYING them. Are you seriously this stupid?

  37. Re:Hey people... by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 1

    Have you noticed that people are still having sex
    All the denouncement had absolutely no effect
    Parents and counselors constantly scorn them
    But people are still having sex
    And nothing seems to stop them

    Do you realise that people are still having sex
    They've been told not to, perhaps they are perplexed
    When you see them holding hands
    They're making future plans
    To engage in the activity
    Do you understand me

    People are still having sex
    Lust keeps on lurking
    Nothing makes them stop
    This safe things not working
    People are still having sex
    It's been going on for quite a while
    Perhaps it's quite fashionable
    It hasn't gone out of style

    It's a fact that people are still having sex
    It's rather obvious it's just what one expects
    The evidence is all around that everyone in town
    Has had it at one time or other in thier life
    At this very moment people are still having sex
    In a downtown condo or street in the projects
    Although you can't see them or hear their breathing sounds
    Someone in this world is having sex right now

    People are still having sex
    People are still having sex

  38. The horse poop will be 6ft deep in Chicago... by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Read a headline from the 1890's in the Tribune when they estimated the horse poop would be 6ft deep by 1920 in the streets. Of course then came the automobile. That's the problem with all these long term prediction models. Things change in ways they never can account for.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    1. Re:The horse poop will be 6ft deep in Chicago... by linear+a · · Score: 1

      Got news for ya. If you average DC in then the depth of horseshit in the streets (and everywhere else) is way deeper than six feet.

    2. Re:The horse poop will be 6ft deep in Chicago... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So we should replace all the humans with robots?

      Deal!

    3. Re:The horse poop will be 6ft deep in Chicago... by hawkfish · · Score: 1

      Read a headline from the 1890's in the Tribune when they estimated the horse poop would be 6ft deep by 1920 in the streets. Of course then came the automobile. That's the problem with all these long term prediction models. Things change in ways they never can account for.

      So instead of horse poop, you have the NYC subways filling with sea water due to CO2 pollution, which is caused in part by automobiles...

      --
      You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
  39. Obligatory xkcd by CentTW · · Score: 1

    The Future

    Apparently, the population is going be around 11 Billion after all the world's resources are depleted, humanity has been genetically engineered to be happy, the moon has been colonized, the US national debt has been paid off, and the US national debt has ballooned completely out of control.

    Either that or predictions that far into the future are completely worthless.

    1. Re:Obligatory xkcd by advid.net · · Score: 1

      XKCD has great ideas and methodology. Also finds out that...

      2018
      Jesus returns to Earth

      2021
      Restored Caliphate unifies Middle East

      2023
      Jesus returns to Earth (again)

      2025
      US power fades

      2026
      Rock bands die out

      2028
      Tobacco outlawed

      ... and up to 2101. It's almost mesmerizing.

      Check out some funny paradox at 2032 and 2044 :)

      Maybe we should google bomb the empty years and ask XKCD for a refresh!

  40. HA! by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    HA! I'll be dead! HAHAHAHAHAHA! This world is fucked, I'm just addin'; to it.

  41. Back to normal by Alomex · · Score: 1

    The UN has consistently overestimated population growth since 1980. They issue low, medium and high projections with the low variant being the one that consistently comes to pass.

    The sole exception is Africa where growth over the last 10 years has exceeded the low variant. Now they have swiftly corrected this mistake by making an absurd 4 billion people in Africa projection. So we are back to normal UN population division working mode. Their motto is: population growth wildly overestimated the world over.

    1. Re:Back to normal by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      On what data or "proclamaitions" do you base your post? AFAICT the population is growing according to the book.
      (No offense, how can you be wrong with a 30 years population forcast anyway?)

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    2. Re:Back to normal by Alomex · · Score: 1

      On what data or "proclamaitions" do you base your post?

      1) I've been personally following the figures for that long just out of personal curiosity. Initially the figures were only mildly out of whack, but for the last twenty years they beggar belief.

      2) The UN population division revises its figures downwards with every single revision, since their projected present has to match census results.

      AFAICT the population is growing according to the book.

      Depends which book you are reading.

      No offense, how can you be wrong with a 30 years population forcast anyway?

      Exactly, which leads to the question: is the UN population division that incompetent or are they being lead by a different agenda.

      Btw until 2011 the UN projection assumed that fertility rates would magically stabilize at 1.7 children per couple rather than continuing falling as it has in all countries who reached that imaginary threshold. After 20 years of making this wholly unsupported claim they finally relented and removed it from their projections in 2011.

      Hope that answers your questions.

  42. I don't really think this will slow down by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've said for years it won't slow down like they think.

    You are already seeing subcultures in the 1st world which are breeding at a higher rate for a variety of reasons (religion is significant).

    If you view humans as a virus- those which breed quickly seem plausible to become the dominant group in the population.

    Sad, because the earth is a paradise at about 2 to 3 billion.

    We are way past the earth's carrying capacity and it's too late to change anything.

    I expect that, like deer, we'll do fine until there is a glitch, virus, etc. and then a billion or more will die fairly quickly. Hopefully after I'm dead of natural causes.

    We are making a lot of progress on disease so I'm thinking disruption of food delivery or destruction of water supply is more likely-- lots of aquifers being drawn down now.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:I don't really think this will slow down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at the last 100 years of science. I think as our technology keeps getting better and cheaper, the humans infected with wander lust will solve the issue elegantly.

  43. Re:Hey people... by cffrost · · Score: 1

    Hey people... STOP FUCKING [with taxpayer-/employer-subsidized contraceptive programs]!

    FTFY. [Before any of you conservatives fly off the handle, please hear me out]: People won't stop fucking, and Chinese-style child-limits are off the table in any society that values individual autonomy. Thus, I am of the opinion that no opportunity to put contraceptives into the hands of all of those willing to accept them should be interfered with — consider it is an investment in the future. To the conservatives who may balk at this, I ask you: Would you rather subsidize $0.25 condoms, or the ~$100,000+ it costs to raise each unwanted child for 18 years?

    --
    Thank you, Edward Snowden.

    "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  44. Bad Religion by Tighe_L · · Score: 1

    Remember Bad Religion's "10 in 2010" song. According them them we would all be starving by now. Dummies.

  45. Re:Hey people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I completely forgot about that song! BTW, the line is "This AIDS thing's not working". Not too PC, I know but hey...

  46. Re: It's just a typo by DickBreath · · Score: 1

    > How the hell is the NSA supposed to keep track of all those people?!?!

    It's just a typo. I'm sure they meant that the world population could reach 11 Million by 2100. (Million with an M, not Billion with a B.)

    --

    I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  47. Time for a new food source by CosaNostra+Pizza+Inc · · Score: 1

    Soilent Green, anyone?

    1. Re:Time for a new food source by Greyfox · · Score: 1
      I think if I had a bunch of dead humans to process into food, I could make something more appetizing than Soilent Green. Like Greyfox's "pork" jerky. In teriyaki and pepper flavor! And unlike pork, which has had pretty much ALL the delicious fat bred out of it, the local supply of humans should be wonderfully marbled! At least for the next couple of decades anyway. I got the best "pork" jerky anywhere, bitches!

      Sure I could outsource production to China, but whenever I eat Chinese, I'm hungry again an hour later! (Dunno who I stole that from, but kudos!)

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  48. Intelligent design? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    I don't think so. And at very least, the "Intelligence" didn't think this thing through.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  49. Fearmongering... blast off! by Omestes · · Score: 1

    And what about when the world is consuming trillions of gallons of Water from the oceans?

    It is a good thing that the water cycle is really fast, then, especially when we ignore ground and surface fresh water. It also is a good thing that the oceans are stupendously large. Water, on a grand scale, isn't really a limited resource, or at least until we start cracking it for hydrogen, or something. Water is as renewable as oxygen and free (non-fossil) carbon.

    --
    A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
  50. One word to the hungry Africans: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop fucking!

  51. Population 11 Billion... by flargleblarg · · Score: 1

    ...all Borg.

  52. 2100? Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I feel secure in saying everyone reading this right now is at least 99% likely to be dead by then.

    Sucks to be the class of 2060+?

  53. White population in collapse by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 1

    Its important to note that nearly all population growth is occuring among black, asian and other non white populations. The white population of the world is basically going extinct because the birth rates in Europe are so low that they are half of what is needed just to maintain the white-european population. Many others have pointed this out, that the statistics an data clearly show that th white race is in very serious population decline and is dying out. Added to this would be the effects of miscegenation which accelerate the extinction of the white race. The birth rate crisis in those countries has been caused, intentionally, by the policies of governments of those countries, such as tax policies that discourage having children. The problem is compound and is caused by several factors including the promotion of radical feminism that discourages women from taking on motherly responsibilities, the availability of contraceptives, and the fact that so many farming and manufacturing middle income jobs have gone away. This has resulted in middle income jobs that did not require a college education disappearing. This has increased burdens on families to afford college education and has contributed to birth rate crisis.

    It is clear that what must be done is to increase the birth rates in europe by incentivizing white Europeans to have more children to bring birth rates up above replacement level there and to end immigration.

    Otherwise, we could be facing the extinction of blue eyed, blond/brown skinned people. ironically, the white race is the most unique of the planets races, yet it is the one that is clearly going extinct due to gthe genocidal policies of governments. Clearly, immigration, wars on white fertility are being used as weapons against white people to destroy their race. This is being done by people who claim to be for "diversity". They are not. They are trying to destroy diversity by destroying the most unique race on the planet in an effort to elimate and erase human diversity. Immigration threatens to destroy diversity, in no way does it promote human diversity. For instance, lets say we dumped a million arabs into Japan. Arabs already have their own culture in the middle east, doing this would only damage the uniqueness of Japan and threaten the unique identity of the Japanese people. The arabs and japanese remain more distinct and unique if they remain in different countries than they would if we did the above. This general principle applies everywhere.

    Just today the US census has basically said that white americans are going extinct, white people are not having enough children just to maintain their own population level, as a result white people will become a minority of the US population by 2043 if this continues.

    What we are seeing here is the result of specific, intentional policies carried out by governments and institutions to attack, oppress, and marginalise, and carry out what amounts to a genocidal program of extermination against the white race, to render them shrinking minorities in their own country so they can be oppressed. Mass immigration is clearly part of an agenda to destroy white america rooted in pure racist hatred of white people. I oppose anything that would cause the destruction or reduction of population of any race in whole or in part due to any means, because I believe all races are equally valuable and I oppose anyone that would want to destroy or threaten our races. Due to intentional governmental and institutional policies, including an intentional war on family values and an economic war on the white race, there has been a engineered attack on and collapse of the white birth rate, which is far below replacement level. at the same time, policies, incljuding immigration, are a part of a compound problem designed to cause the annihilation of the white race and to cause white, blonde haired, blue eyed people to become an engangered species by blending the race out of existance through a combination of an immigration invasion of white countries, and inter

    1. Re:White population in collapse by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 1

      I meant to say we could be facing the extinction of brown haired/blonde haired, white skinned people. This is the result of intention al government policies and actions that constitute a genocidal program of extermination against the white race. it does not have to be this way and we can and need to stop this to preserve global racial diversity, by stopping immigration, prohibiting miscegenation that threatens to destroy races, and requiring governments to take actions to incentivize above replacement level birth rates.

  54. Re:Condoms by amorsen · · Score: 1

    Not much. Most of that population growth comes from other areas, like China or India.

    China? Population growth? Seriously?

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  55. suddenly, Bernanke's printing presses make sense by NemoinSpace · · Score: 1

    Buying back crashed gold with cheap dollars is a plan any (R) or (D) can agree on.

  56. And yet its a shithole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So tell me then, grasshoppa, why with a hundreds of thousands of years head start is Africa as a whole still one of the shittiest places in the world? You ever been to Djbouti? I have. I am surprised I didn't die from the stench alone. I will second the notion that it will still be a pathetic continent with no human development. With a head start that big, THEY should be the world's super power. Not the G8. You can't blame population or lack of resources either. India and China both have humongous populations and a lot of poor folks yet even thier poorest still get to eat for the most part. It is gonna take ALOT of work to fix Africa and the first leg of that journey is to actually educate them. And I don't mean just teach them how to read. I mean teaching the north to stop being ultraorthodox muslim asshats and instead just be normal muslims like Europe and America have. We have to teach the middle and south to stop being tribal asshats who only look out for thier tribe and stop warring amongst themselves when they could band together and actually have nice things. The Hutu's and Tutsi's have been warring now for how long? No, if left to thier own devices as they have been now for hundreds of thousands of years not a damned thing will change. Alot of people will die whether from starving or warring or sickness. Now don't misconstrue my message. I am not one to meddle. If they want to be left to thier own devices then leave em alone. But when I say that I mean really leave em alone. Stop giving them money, food, medicine, weaponry and all the other shit we do. If they are strong, they will survive and figure out how to take care of themselves. Teach a man to fish and all that. If we must help them, and I am all for that as well, then they are gonna have to meet our standards to get it.

  57. Overrated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That tripe is trollish and overrated and I modded it down. I also think you just wanted an excuse to use deus ex machina. Define it :P

    What praytell are these resources that we are consuming faster than they can be replaced? You mention gas, is oil something you think we are running out of? Every single time some bunch of geologists say we're about to run out of oil we magically, THROUGH THE POWAH OF TECHNOLOGY! (tm), figure out a way to get some more. The otto cycle engine is a bad example to use as well. It actually has hard physical limitations cause in this house we follow the laws of thermodynamics. If you wanna bitch about cars, then your problem is we won't drop that antiquated piece of junk and move forward into the 21st century with something new. You can also blame alot of the issues on politics and money. We all know how much power we could have available if we'd just fire up some more nuke plants. But NOOOOOO. That just can't happen cause at sometime, somewhere in some dude's brain a meteor filled with alien terrorists is gonna strike the nuke plant busting a hole through the outer structure so that the aliens can plant bombs on the core which the detonation of will cause hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes that will amplify the radiation so much it will give his Aunt Mae in Texas breast cancer. Cause that is how NIMBY people think. You and all those fucks are Luddites.

  58. And white people will have been genocided... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...out of existence, by billions of third worlders.

    Do you think your children will thank you when they are only ten percent of the children at their school, and surrounded by hate-filled non-whites, who have been told every day of their lives that the reason for their personal failures is WHITE people?

    Please explain why you think white people don't have the right to have their own countries.

  59. why do we want more people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Great. So best case, everyone has a western standard of living: you'll have to book 3 months in advance to go on a 5 mile walk in the 'countryside' (a glassed in path between two intensively farmed soya fields), before going home to your high rise to eat your heavily processed Nestle pap, and read threads on ./ where people say "overpopulation? No, we can still fit plenty more in if we just cut down all the trees and process the carbon dioxide with algae tanks".

    The world has too many humans for comfort already - even if energy availability and technology make it possible to cram more in, why do we want to?

    Thank **** I'll be dead before we reach 11 billion.

  60. Racist much? by booch · · Score: 1

    Holy racism, Batman!

    I find it highly unlikely that the mostly white power structure in this country is bound and determined to exterminate white people. That's just not how powerful people behave. Powerful people behave in a way that preserves and increases their power (and the power of those like them), not destroys it. The whole point of the US Constitution is that this is natural human behavior, so we need to make sure to limit such power.

    Look at your own interests in your post, Eravnrekaree. You're interested in ensuring people like yourself continue to prosper. Why would more powerful people have strongly different interests? Can you find any historical evidence of other situations where a group of people were intent on eliminating people like themselves? History is replete with the opposite case, but I can't think of anything like what you think is happening.

    --
    Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  61. USA can help by booch · · Score: 1

    The USA is here to help!

    We will gladly start a war with any 3rd World country to help reduce the population. We really can't afford it, but we'll do it if we have to.

    You're welcome!

    --
    Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  62. HOW MANY HUMANS IN 11 BILLIONS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What percentage of HUMANS? Humans are weak compared to big numbers of the other species and more if it is surrounded and ballooned by Excrement and Diarrhea Colored Anthropoids.