World population to pass 7 billion on October 31: U.N.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: Reuters

The world's population is projected to pass 7 billion on October 31 as it heads toward 10 billion or more by the end of the century, a new U.N. report said on Tuesday.

The report also predicted that the global population would be higher by mid-century than its last edition forecast two years ago, reaching 9.31 billion instead of 9.15 billion. It attributed this to fewer deaths as well as more births than it had anticipated.

The October date for reaching the 7 billion mark is based on calculations from current trends and Hania Zlotnik, head of the U.N. economic department's population division, said it should be taken "with a grain of salt."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/03/us-un-population-idUSTRE7426GI20110503

[Adsos Letter]

1. And as of Today...the US comprises a whopping 311,283,259 people in the world.

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

[arcane1]

2. The population has basically doubled in my lifetime

It's been quite a ride so far!

[SkyDaddy7]

3. Mother Nature at some point will...

reset the balance & it will not be pretty!

[Adsos Letter]

4. The Bubonic Plague was pretty effective back in the 14th century.

Things do have a way of happening.

[frebrd]

5. I'd really like to believe that..........

but I'm afraid I don't.

:(

[Tesha]

12. At some point, it's unavoidable.

Arable land, drinkable water, energy to make it all work,
these are all limited quantities. And rising sea levels
will have their own impact on all of these.

Will it produce a die-off? No one can say for sure; a
break-through such as commercial fusion power would
stave it off, but short of that, humanity has proven
time and time again that it's too stupid to limit its
own numbers or to keep itself from fouling its own nest.

War, hunger, and disease will do the job eventually.

Tesha

[frebrd]

13. I'm not that concerned about....

humans dying off; I'm just afraid we'll kill off everything else on Earth before we go.

[Freddie Stubbs]

18. As third-world countries become modernized, their population growth will slow

[Terry in Austin]

19. What is this "modernize" you speak of?

"Become more like the U.S."?
"Use up 5 planets' worth of resources"?
"Adopt a lifestyle made possible by 58 barrels of oil equivalent energy consumption per capita per year"?

That'll be quite a feat, considering we now use 30 billion barrels per year worldwide and production has stopped increasing.

Still, it's true that their population growth will slow, but for more natural reasons.

[Freddie Stubbs]

20. Two career families

[Terry in Austin]

22. Good one! -- I thought you were being serious -nt

[Hissyspit]

15. Yup. About 3.5 (or slightly less) than when I was born in 1962.

I point that out to my students all the time.

[Nihil]

16. Wow. Just wow. (n/t)

:wow:

[Kip Humphrey]

6. STOP BREEDING!!!

[RKP5637]

7. Earth should be renamed "Planet of the Breeders." n/t

[johnnypneumatic]

8. time to make same-sex marriage legal

and give a large signing bonus

[David__77]

10. Gay people can reproduce too, but I see what you are saying.

My ex and I were going to have a baby. A lesbian friend was to be the biological mother, and I the biological father. He would not be "ex" now had we followed through with that...

[David__77]

9. The growth rate has gone down considerably over last 40 years.

This makes sense. People are becoming more affluent and the old peasant economy is being superseded in many parts of the world, reducing the desire for large families.

China will likely move to negative or zero growth at some point. Much of Europe is that way already, not accounting for migration flows. India and many developing countries aren't all that far behind China in modifying family structure and size.

The expansion of human population made a certain sense since life expectancy radically increased in the last 150 years or so. Even in the US, it was scarcely above 45 years' life expectancy a century ago. It wasn't so much that fertility rates were increasing, but that people weren't dying off as babies or young people so much. And that doesn't even account for the much higher natural miscarriage rate back then. It has taken some time to adjust. People have slowly adopted modern family planning practices. This trend will expand in the years and decades to come.

[Terry in Austin]

21. Ah, the ol' "demographic transition" story

We're becoming more educated and modern and sophisticated and all, so we'll stop breeding like rabbits and all 7 billion of us can enjoy a proper suburban lifestyle. Nice, but expect some skepticism there.

It seems to me that seizing on "well, the growth isn't as fast" kind of distracts from the fact that the sheer number of us is still increasing significantly. Yes, the population will peak and start going down at some point, but that just means a relative change between birth rates and death rates.

Nature bats last, and she's under no obligation to be polite about it.

[Arugula Latte]

11. Goddamn Duggars!

:grr:

[laundry_queen]

14. Exponential growth

in a test tube, by David Suzuki

This is an interesting watch (you have to enter an anwer in the box to see the whole thing). It's scary as hell. http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/testtube

[Javaman]

17. I'm going as "overpopulation" for holloween, what about you? nt

[laundry_queen]

23. Kick nt