AD 2300. Pop: 200 BILLIONS !

According to some demograhics experts, if our demographic curves don't change ( I mean, don't slow down ), we will be more than 200 billions in AD 2300.

Ok, I'm looking for some links about this matter. I had 1, but I lost it.

That would not be good. The earth's resources are strained now! And if there are 200 billion, most other forms of life would be crowded out of existance, except for pets, livestock, rats, microorganisms, and insects. How could there possibly be enough farm land for 200 billion people? We can only hope that the population growth slows down and stabalizes at around 9 billion. I'm only 18, so I would have to live in a very crowded world with a reduced standard of living if population growth picks back up.

whoa! That's a lot of people... dont wanna live in those times.

Relax, monkey-boy, it's going to be ok.

When I was in elememtary school the enlightened enviromentalists were scaring us to death with stories of how the earth would be a barren wasteland by now, and as you can see, we are even greener now than we were then and the pop isn't as they told us it'd be.
Our resources are not strained at all now, bu our logistics and efficiency isn't all that great. While in some parts of the world, people have made unbelievable advances in living and technology, while in other places such as Africa, people are still following losing traditions that strips their enviroment, worsening their condition. On the whole, however, their are still nations that reward invention and invention continues to benefit us all.

Don't be overly concerned, phunk-meister, just do your part in conservation and pollution control and it'll be alright.

BTW-I'd be more concerned with the flouridation in the water. Buy a water purifier!

relax. doom and gloom merchants have, as TC said, been saying that since the 70's and its all come to nothing...

I am pessimistic about a lot of things, but I do remain optimistic about population growth. I checked the facts. The world should have 9.3 billion by 2050. That's a gain of only a little over 3 billion from 2000 to 2050. The population will probably go up to 11 billion, then slowly stabalize around 10 billion somewhere. If exponential population growth were to ever come back, it would be very bad for all of us. Fortunately, that probably won't happen.

Not wanting to bring Religion in to it but I personally believe that civillization will become extinct long before 2300.

But if we were to carry on then by that time I bellieve that we would have colonised the moon and most probably Mars. Also we might have a space station up there. So this would help in spreading population about.

Mr Crowne you said that we are greener now than we were back then. Were you talking of actual greenery or pollution control?. Also were you talking of Earth or another planet?. If it was Earth then you have been living on another planet.

Netchicken (why is it that Tyler believes your fat)

You said that they have been saying that since the 70's. Well do you know how much the population has grown since the 70's?. I believe that if we do carry on multiplying the scale we are now, then it is a great possibility of the population being 9.3 billion by 2050 and possibly 200 billion by 2300. But as I already have said I do not believe we shall be here by then.

Now whats probably going to happen is a disease gets out of control, it doesnt have to be from terrorists at all. Probably a mutated strain of a virus that we can't control at all. Since we are living such close quarters, it would spread rapidly, killing off most of the population, if not all of it. This would be doing mother nature a favor. Either that, or if you brainwash everyone in the world, leaving about 100 farmers and people to transport the food and stuff and the big head honchos and all, you could divide everybody up into a family of 4, 1 dad 1 mom, and two children, the children would go to school, most likely these would be scattered through out the place, this would be so that they could learn to read, wright, and do math, nothing more, nothing else. So you do this, and give each "family" group 1 acre of land. Food is shipped in periodically, and it would only take up about the size of texas, leaving alot of space for food.

Originally posted by stewards
You said that they have been saying that since the 70's. Well do you know how much the population has grown since the 70's?. I believe that if we do carry on multiplying the scale we are now, then it is a great possibility of the population being 9.3 billion by 2050 and possibly 200 billion by 2300. But as I already have said I do not believe we shall be here by then.

I remember howls about an overcrowed world at the end of the century ... the one that just passed. It never eventuated.

China slowed down its pop growth, Europe and Japan is in decline, the rise of the middle class in 3 and 2nd world countries have meant a decline in birth numbers.

IN third world countries Aids has, and will, take an enormous toll on the pop, we are just at the beginning of a huge death curve in countries like China, the Far east, Russia, ex soviet countries etc. In africa the pop is going to drop through the floor in the next 20 years.

Food production and techniques have increased as well and now with GE crops and animals food production will continue to increase using the same land.

Throw in the odd war or 2 and things will be OK...

Personal examples ...

In New Zealand lambing numbers have increased dramatically owing to selective breeding from 1 sheep that consistantly had multiple lambs, this ewe has had her genes incorporated into much on our sheep pop (I don't know how) giving far greater lamb production and sheep numbers than a decade ago while the actual numbers of sheep have decreased.

Also our pop is expected to increase by 1/2 mill in 50 years, thats nothing, and we will be 'lucky' achieve that (despite being voted recently as the safest place on earth to live)

what's nz's immigration policy? can i move there? i have an engineering degree and experience in automation / software engineering, so i would have something to contribute. too many things too f'ed up over here.

heh heh heh... we have one of the most screwed down immigration policies int he world. Seems everyone wants to move here... But if you are from a 1st world country it shouldn't be hard...

Nope, Stewards, this planet, the U.S. It is greener in that there are more trees and it is cleaner in the quality of air, and pollution standards on corporations.

I do have concerns with my local waterways and wouldn't drink the stream water or eat the fish on a bet of dare, but that is getting better, as well.

I'd more than agree TC...take my town for instance. We have a river that was so bad it caught on fire years ago. Now it's much cleaner and so are the other area rivers that dump into Lake Erie. I don't think twice about going to the beach and the fisher are safer to eat than they have ever been. Friday fish fries (with lake Perch and Walleye) are quite popular in these parts.

www.newscientist.com...


Global population to peak in 2070

11:05 02 August 01


The world's population may reach a peak of nine billion as early as 2070 and then start to shrink, according to a new analysis by Austrian researchers.

Wolfgang Lutz, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and his team created thousands of simulations of the future world population and evaluated them, assigning probabilities to each range of possibilities.

They think there is an 85 per cent chance that the global population will stop growing before the end of the century - most probably by 2070. More than one third of people alive in 2100 will be over 60, they say. In Japan, the figure will be one half.

Detailed population projections are vital for governments planning long-term economic strategies, says Lutz. However, Nico Keilman, an economist at the University of Oslo, warns that population projections are notoriously unreliable. The "probabalistic statements are themselves uncertain to some extent", he writes in the journal Nature.


Declining fertility rates

Lutz thinks declining fertility rates around the world are the main driving
force behind the slowing in population growth.

"We hope these findings will help people get away from the apocalyptic view that the population will explode in the future," he told New Scientist. "Humankind can control the future by controlling fertility."

The population will start to shrink when the average number of children per woman falls below 2.1 (this figure is above two to provide for childhood mortality). "We are assuming that fertility levels in most parts of the world will soon go below the replacement level," Lutz says. "In some countries, like India, it will probably go down to 2.1 and then stay constant."

In some parts of Europe, fertility levels have already dropped dramatically. In Spain, the average number of children per woman is 1.2. In Russia the figure is 1.1.

"In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, we have already seen the peak of population size, and it will decline in the future," Lutz says. "However, the US will continue to grow due to immigration." He adds: "This shows the notion that poor countries are growing and rich countries are shrinking is not true."

Lutz thinks fertility is dropping as more women are able to go for "quality" of children, rather than quantity. "The reason it's dropping below the replacement level in Europe is probably because of fundamental changes to the role of women in society," he adds.

But mortality from AIDS and other poverty-related illnesses is also a key factor, says Lutz. The possibility of future unpredicted health disasters - such as another AIDS - is also included in the team's projections.


Considering climate

Several groups are working on population predictions. In September, the
United Nations Population Fund will release a new report projecting that the world population will peak at 9.3 billion by 2050.

Lutz says there are several key differences in the way the UNPF has made its predictions, compared with his team's approach.

"The UN does not consider climate change - which we think will hit agricultural production in Africa and southern Asia in particular," says Lutz. "We are also a lot more pessimistic about African mortality than the UN. In 2020, we assume life expectancy in Africa to be about 10 years lower than the UN."

While more developed countries will see a "window of opportunity" when a relatively large (though ageing) workforce is available, Africa and southern Asia will continue to struggle, say the team. "I'm not optimistic about that part of the world at all," Lutz says.

Well, speaking of water.

The Cayahoga(sp?) so polluted, to catch a fish and then dump it in another body of water is a fine of 50,000 for dumping toxic waste. I believe it is the same river that caught fire. But then you have the river near here, the Maumee River. It was once known as the muddy Maumee, but we have cleaned it up and it is clean enough to drink. Sure, it was probably the zebra mussels over breeding, but it helped.

Or San fran,(I think) it has air pollution problems. What they do? Pass laws to help out. They are working. All we need to do is regulate before the problem arises. If the law had been there before, then no air pollution to worry about. Then several hundred people wouldn't have been made sick, or even died! But in the end we tried to fix are mistake, and succeded.

The Thames in London is a good example of cleaning up. At one stage it was so polluted you could walk across it now I read that trout and other fish are back in it and you can catch them from london itself ...

You're from around Toledo James, aren't you? Cuyahoga is the river that caught fire. It's much better. Those zeebra mussels are bad and good. They each filter about 1 gallon of water a day from what I have read though the boat owners hate 'em. Probably not as bad as the lampreys that are in the lakes and rivers!

[Edited on 2-11-2002 by Bob88]

This fear of population outstripping resources is of course an old one -Malthus springs to mind; but one imagines it will never get quite as far as has been suggested: if nothing else, nature has a way of limiting populations: if only by disease and starvation.
It woudl be inetresting to know if tehre were an optimum size for the EArth's population -I suspect we've alraedt passed it.
I think that, rather than the simple totals, what may be distressing about possible future scenarios is the demographic mix: greater numbers of older people, increased strain on welfare and similar resources and a declining - relatively -population of Westerners.

Originally posted by Estragon

It woudl be inetresting to know if tehre were an optimum size for the EArth's population -I suspect we've alraedt passed it.

If everybody on earth have our Westerners lifestyle, then the maximum is between 800 millions & 1 billions.

thanks, ultra_phoe. -as I suggested: we're well past it.
Oh dear.