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New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100
vinces99 (2792707) writes Using modern statistical tools, a new study led by the University of Washington and the United Nations finds that world population is likely to keep growing throughout the 21st century. The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, the study concludes, about 2 billion higher than widely cited previous estimates. The paper published online Sept. 18 in the journal Science includes the most up-to-date numbers for future world population, and describes a new method for creating such estimates. "The consensus over the past 20 years or so was that world population, which is currently around 7 billion, would go up to 9 billion and level off or probably decline," said corresponding author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and of sociology. ... The paper explains the most recent United Nations population data released in July. This is the first U.N. population report to use modern statistics, known as Bayesian statistics, that combines all available information to generate better predictions.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Ebola or some other virus doesn't wipe out a third of the world population.
...all the comments about "Bayesianism is better than Frequentism" or "Why didn't the authors use this Frequentist analysis?" start popping up. Not that I'm advocating for one over the other, just arguing that they're both tools that are often used for the same nail without realizing that you need to hold them slightly differently for them to actually work the way they're supposed to.
I hope a carpentry analogy is acceptable in lieu of a car analogy.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:
Sure, some of the above would require some work to make comfortable, but it can be done even with today's technology — by 2100 even an individual (or a family) would convert surroundings to their tastes. And it would certainly be easier, than moving an appreciable quantity of people off-Earth...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
At least, one could hope :)
And why would you hope for such a disastrous event when there still exists the unknown of natural sustainability with 11 billion people?
As crazy as that sounds, we're not exactly sleeping on top of each other stacked 15 high these days. You might have a point with food supplies and resources, if we were not constantly being accused of wasting so much food feeding an nation of obese gluttons.
Take the greed of the 1% down a few notches, and sustainability might be far easier than previously thought without tactics like disease or bloodshed thinning the herd.
The portion of the population which breeds under given circumstances will come to dominate the population.
It might be expressed as a particular religion, simple horniness combined with resistance to using birth control, or myriad other ways.
But that part of the population will be a larger percentage over time and finally come to dominate the population.
There is an exception-- a universe 133 scenario. The population in those experiments collapsed and did not recover.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century.
You mean, the continent that can barely feed itself and is the source of deadly plagues (Ebola, etc.) is somehow going to support four times it's current population? I'd like to see how that is feasible...
It's not finding places for people to live, it is finding land to grow the food necessary to feed people in the style to which they have become/are becoming/will become accustomed to. Basic food prices have been spiking for the last several years, although it hasn't shown up in significant changes in the super market yet because most of the cost of processed food comes from the processing not the ingredients. (If the price of corn doubles it adds only 11 cents to the cost of a quarter pound hamburger: http://www.g-feed.com/2012/08/...) After years of stability, the rate at which virgin forest land is being converted to agricultural production has also started to increase again, likely because increases in crop productivity has slowed to a crawl in many of the most productive agricultural regions of the world: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
Do tell how "the west" is responsible for most of Africa's ills. Last I checked they've mostly been governing themselves for a few generations (exception SA). Shall we blame the Brits for Sunni and Shiia slaughtering each other for hundreds of years too?
Reproducing at the rates third world countries "enjoy" is also extremely greedy.
One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
If we *don't* do this, then I'm fairly sure that after we hit 11 billion by 2100, we'll be lucky to hit 50 million by 2200. Fewer, if we try and solve our resource problems by throwing nukes at one another, which sounds likely.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes. What we've been so far with technology is "lucky." There's always been another *cheap* and *easy* resource to exploit. Short of a breakthrough in battery technology and thorium reactors (or fusion) that's not going to happen again.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
How do you accomplish the former without the latter?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
West, just by the fact of existing, messed up Africa.
Before white men's ships arrived, Africans were living in their tribal villages leading simple agricultural or hunter/gatherer lives. Just as people all over the world have been doing for ten thousand years. It was no paradise, but they had a balance with natural forces where the population wouldn't grow faster than the food supply.
Then comes the white man with his antibiotics and high-yielding maize (which he got from the New World Indians, but that's another story). Suddenly infant mortality went down and crop yields went up and population could grow like crazy. But Africans never developed the institutions and social structures necessary to support a densely populated society that the Europeans and East Asians did. African nations today still run pretty much like they did thousands of years ago, local warlords taking power. Except now it's millions of people instead of a few villages.
Africans would've been infinitely better off left completely to their own devices. Would they still be living in stone age primitive societies? Yes. Would it be preferable to what they have now? Yes.
I'll be long gone and I've made sure that I created no annoying descendants too. I've done my part for population control. It's partially how a rationalize my 16MPG Mustang GT, hour long hot showers, and keeping my thermostat at 60 degrees all summer long. I'm bad but I've made sure that I'm the last of my line. Now get off my lawn!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Shall we blame the Brits for Sunni and Shiia slaughtering each other for hundreds of years too?
Mainly yes.
Ever looked at a 'natural' map, like Europe, Asia etc?
And ever looked at an 'artificial' map, like USA, Africa?
Do you notice a difference? Most borders in Africa are artificial. Straight lines going through old 'tribes' territories, splitting up stuff that 'belongs together' and add 'random' areas to now existing countries.
E.g Texas in the USA, several straight borders, same for Libya, Algeria, Sudan etc. in Africa.
Basically everything that is running bad in Africa is a direct result of european imperialism.
The whole continent was still 'sone age' or early 'iron age' when the occupiers finally left.
But now a tribe had tanks, the other had not. The guys ruling there usually do one thing: 'cleanse' the previous ruling cohorts and replace every post with family members and far relatives. Regardless if they win an election or become rulers by a coupe. The idea that law is above everything, that corruption is bad etc. etc. is a strange concept to them. How should it not, during the occupation by europeans they experienced that the laws are not protecting them, they are only to the benefit of the imperialists.
There is plenty of literature about Africa around 1900 ... good movies, too. Even random 'novels' which made it to movies give good back ground knowledge, or at least an impression.
In roman times, and even when the british conquered half of it, Africa was full with empires, striving huge empires.
But the British did it like the Romans: befriend one tribe, give him 'modern' weapons and let him lose on the 'enemies' of that tribe. With the promise to support that tribe with houses, more weapons, schools, and most important: churches.
They did the same in India and New Zealand ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The irony is that you can only really accomplish the needed sustainability if you do NOT try to accomplish the former.
Communism and to a lesser extent Socialism always attack the rich and promise the spoils to "the people". In the end the people always end up with nearly nothing (see Venezuela).
Whereas that evil vile capitalism has only ever just pulled millions upon millions of people out of poverty, worldwide, over the past 60 years.
The CO2 being produced through breathing is a net neutral.
Plants are carbon neutral. They have been since the carboniferous era.
CO2 from using power will be the issue, unless we start a aggressive plan to stop using CO2 emitting technology for power.
By aggressive, I mean 75 years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We could easily feed 11 million today
I sure hope so :-)
But we cannot easily feed 11 billion today. We're hitting the limits of fresh-water availability. Desalination is a solution in SimCity, but the real world is more complicated. And if we DID manage to get to 11 billion, that doesn't fix things, since we'll then be having people predicting the population growing to 20 billion by the end of the 22nd century.
And while economic development might wind up with individual families having fewer kids, that doesn't mean total population goes down. To the contrary, total population goes UP. Just look at the population growth in the last 100 years. We've gone from 1.8 billion to 7 billion. Additionally, with rising per capita demands for more energy-intensive food (meat instead of grain, etc) and more economic participation, the footprint of every individual is greater, so that 7 billion is having a lot more than 4x the impact of 1.8 billion 100 years ago.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The best story on those lines is The Mote in Gods Eye by Larry Niven.
But we already have tried something like this : China's one child policy has reduced (and will reduce further) their population. Now we just need India and possibly Bangladesh, Indonesia and Brazil to do the same.
All problems of mankind are man made.
Nailed it. So the more people, the more problems.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
As "crony capitalism" grows, the oligarchy is once again ascendant.
If third world countries become richer the should have less children, so 2 birds with one obese stone.
There are countries that are socialist, (e.g. Nordic countries) compared to the US and doing quite well, better based on quality of life measures.
Don't get me wrong capitalism as severed the world well, it has increase its production capability nicely, but times have changed, we have reached a point where we are now not struggling to survive, on the contrary our excesses are now killing us, we are now simply consuming for the sake of consuming, there is no reason our economic system shouldn't change to meet our current needs.
The world is not black and white, and not even shades of gray. There is no need either one or the other, you can be in between, their may also be other alternatives, we can throw in the mix as well. If we limit our thinking to Capitalism vs Communism we limit the possible solutions we can come up with.
One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
Well, there is coal. That's not going away by 2100 despite your assertion.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes.
Which is incorrect. As the paper notes, most of the population growth comes from Africa and Asia. The developed world actually is a population sink - the overpopulation problem has been fixed there. What responsibility am I supposed to have for population growth elsewhere in the world? And what power am I supposed to have to fix that?
The rate of extreme poverty in China rate fell to 12% in 2010. Guess how much it was in 1981, when they had real socialism? The kind of socialism where people went to prison for being right-wingers. 84%.
It's funny how you call for a truce and say neither is right...when socialism insists that it is 100% right all the time, and is not joking.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Which is socialist. You do not understand that capitalism and socialism are not opposites.
Play Command HQ online
So we've given them lower infant mortality and more regular food availability, while they continued to kill and enslave each other at roughly the same rate as before. And you think that "messed them up"?
How so?
Seems to me at worst we've made things slightly better for them. I'm pretty sure the women, at least, are happy to see more of their children surviving to adulthood. Plus we've given them the tools and knowledge to build better societies, even if it hasn't happened yet. How is that a bad thing?
Not to mention that you whole comment stinks of condescension. "Should have left those poor dumb Negroes to their own devices; they'd be much happier running around naked chucking spears at the local wildlife".