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'The World Might Actually Run Out of People' (wired.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: By 2050 there will be 9 billion carbon-burning, plastic-polluting, calorie-consuming people on the planet. By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario. Such dire population predictions aren't the stuff of sci-fi; those numbers come from one of the most trusted world authorities, the United Nations. But what if they're wrong? Not like, off by a rounding error, but like totally, completely goofed?
That's the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrel Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. "In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline," they write. "Once that decline begins, it will never end." But Empty Planet is not a book about statistics so much as it is about what's driving the choices people are making during the fastest period of change in human history.
That's the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrel Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. "In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline," they write. "Once that decline begins, it will never end." But Empty Planet is not a book about statistics so much as it is about what's driving the choices people are making during the fastest period of change in human history.
At least there will always be an infinite supply of hype and silly speculative "news" stories. They'll be just as insightful when the writers are all robots.
Iâ(TM)m done worrying about shit. Deforestation? Cool. Plastic filling the oceans? Bitchen. Millennials getting fat-cancer? Rad. Mass-shootings? Sucks to be you not having a gun with which to return fire if you wanted to live, Nuclear annihilation? Wake me when its over.
What is this bullshit about? Human extinction even without nukes? Excellent. All of you can fuck off, as a species. I simply am out of give-a-shit at this point. This life has been exhausting, to tell you the truth.
Today, I learned the guy who was fixing to replace the guy who either was, or was not, the guy in the photo in blackface or in the KKK getup may be replaced by someone who was accused of sexually assaulting some bitch a decade ago.
We are left abandoned to King Donald I by the so-called Democratic Party because they cannot stop eating their own and anyone who may have ever fucked up in any way, no matter what he has done since or whom he has become, must be destroyed, ESPECIALLY if he has a penis.
Fuck it. I am officially done giving a shit.
I haven't read the initial research or the article but I'm 100% certain that both are wrong.
Evidently the UN team never watched Idiocracy. Carl's Jr Or perhaps they are part of it. Mountain Dew.
Perhaps their study found that AI will perfect a fidget spinner more enjoyable than eating or Sex. Taco Bell.
Or we'll get so politically correct that we all get assigned to one night of Rehab. Carl's Jr.
See you in 500 years.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That's why Brexit is important; England doesn't really want to lose whatever independence it still has.
That is nonsense. Every country in the EU is completely independent. You can have any law you want, unless it contradicts an EU law. And there are honestly no EU laws a sane person would want to contradict ... so go figure.
The proclaimed loss of independence is just propaganda.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.