re: Population of the entire world. When does it pop?

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However, the overall change in the world's population has never shown a protracted downward trend.

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I don't think you understand what the rate of population growth means, which is why I highlighted it earlier. No one has stated the population is declining. What is declining, and there is absolutely no denying it, is the rate of population growth.

This has been stated numerous times throughout the thread.

Yes, women are working more than ever over there so their marriage rates of younger people have decreased significantly.

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This simply doesn't stand up to reality. Look at Europe, the M.E., Brazil, Japan. All of those areas have birth rates that are below replacement level, and they are all voluntary. Without massive immigration, every European nation will have a smaller population in 50 years than it does right now. This is a trend that is growing around the world. Population will not increase forever.

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Again, please look at the big picture, which includes the whole earth and not just parts of it. Look at all of the variables rather than just one or a few of them. Look at what has happened and what is happening rather than just what some few project (often on flawed data) will happen.

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Population will not increase forever.

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Correct. Will the increase stop because of a willful human response or will a natural catastrophe have to be responsible? I think that's the bottom-line question of this thread, don't you?

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No, you don't seem to understand what rate is. The growth rate is dropping. The population may be growing but the rate is dropping. There's a link I posted to on the previous page that shows the rate has declined by almost 50% since 1960

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I think you're confusing birth rate with population growth rate. The latter depends on more than just the former variable. Death rates, for example, are as relevant as birth rates in determining overall growth rates.

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LINK

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Info about the author of this link:

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Rebecca Nelson @rebeccarnelson Rebecca Nelson is a writing and web production intern for TIME. Now based in New York, she has lived and reported in Seattle, Chicago, London, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. If everything goes as planned, she will graduate from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in June.

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Jesus, dude, you should start screening the authors of articles you think support your view. She's a freaking intern, for god's sake. Please stop referring to this crap to back up your stand.

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I think you're issue is you are looking at raw population numbers and confusing them with the growth rate. The population has grown, but the rate of population growth is slowing, drastically.

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There is nothing confusing about raw, certified numbers. There is no better way to make projections than on what has and is happening.

I can't understand why you buy so readily into the mirage of a shrinking total world population by mid to end of this century. Of the world's 7 billion people, approximately 2 billion are well off, 3 billion are surviving at a marginal level and 2 billion are at the point of starvation.

It's only the first 2 billion who are educated enough and motivated enough to limit their reproduction. For a number of reasons, the remaining 5 billion continue to add to the problem of a stressed world ecosystem which promises only to get worse.

Your optimism in the human race is commendable, if misguided.

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Yes the rate is slowing. Yes it will go to zero. It has to unless we colonize another planet. What will it look when we reach zero growth? It will look like hell.

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Actually, it has remained fairly static for the past decade at about 80 million added per year. Again, the bottom-line question is what will end the population increase? In Scrooster's words, "When will it pop?"

The easy answer is it'll pop when demand for sustenance outstrips supply. Of course, the earth's forests may be gone and its air, rivers, lakes and oceans horribly polluted by the time that happens..., oh, wait, that's already happening.

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I think you're confusing birth rate with population growth rate. The latter depends on more than just the former variable. Death rates, for example, are as relevant as birth rates in determining overall growth rates.

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You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. People (besides myself) have been trying to tell you.
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Jesus, dude, you should start screening the authors of articles you think support your view. She's a freaking intern, for god's sake. Please stop referring to this crap to back up your stand.

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You don't have to be an expert to have access to information that the growth rate is slowing, and eventually will drop. There is a shite load of information out there, writers just assemble it and put it in an article.

Again, your problem is you have absolutely no understanding what the growth rate is. You still think it's raw population growth.



If this graph doesn't do it for you, there is nothing that will get through to you. As you can clearly see, and you've denied...the growth rate is dropping.


LINK

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It took tens of thousands of years for humanity to reach its first billion in 1804. But it took only 123 years to reach its second billion, 32 years to reach its third and another 15 years for its fourth. The seventh billion was attained only 13 years after the sixth.

Yet, the United Nations Population Division’s figures released in May 2011 on Western states' aging workforce provided fresh evidence on the most important trend of our time: the global labor force will peak in 2050 or is already close to peaking in most major economies. If the Industrial Revolution was the main highlight of the 19th century, and competition between sociopolitical ideologies haunted the 20th, then the 21st will be an epoch fixated on the planet’s depopulation, especially in the West and some new industrialized countries. The future humanity faces is not one of overpopulation, but of depopulation.

In most daily controvery, in most emerging economic, political, and social conflicts, the topic of depopulation is likely to be one of the underlying latent factors beneath the surface news. United Nations Statistics Division’s medium variant projections forecasts that the planet will be inhabited by 11 billion humans by 2100, after which date the global population will level off, and even, some say, start to decline sharply. However, birthrates everywhere are falling at a faster rate than most international organizations had previously predicted, so that most demographers maintain that the UN low variant will, in the end, prove closer to the truth. The world’s population is then projected to reach between eight and nine billion between 2040 and 2050. Then, if the trend holds, humanity will enter for the first time into sustained population decline.

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The easy answer is it'll pop when demand for sustenance outstrips supply. Of course, the earth's forests may be gone and its air, rivers, lakes and oceans horribly polluted by the time that happens..., oh, wait, that's already happening.

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Cities will continue to grow up and out. (Think Bladerunner). They will demand more stress on resourses. (Think Stalin). They will become dank, desease infested petri dishes. (Think Dark Ages Rome, Paris, London)

We'll frick it up ... I give it another 300 years tops. But some of you, in your lifetimes, will begin to see the beginning of it about the time you reach my age.

I think we're seeing it in our lifetimes with just 7 billion people on earth.

1. There's a floating trash "continent" in the Pacific that's larger than Texas;
2. One billion people don't have access to clean drinking water;
3. There were 40 million abortions worldwide last year; 1.4 billion since 1980;
4. 2014 is the hottest year on record;
5. Every year, 52 species of plants and animals go extinct or become extremely endangered because of human activity;
6. 2 billion people suffer from malnutrition or famine worldwide;
7. 85% of earth's forest cover has been cleared, degraded or fragmented;
8. Fish stocks worldwide are declining at precipitous rates;
9. At our current rate of use, oil will basically run out in about 50 years;
10. Can it get much worse? Oh hell yes.

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The "pop" is when humans start making the conscious choice to limit the number of children they have. Its not a real "pop". It is the result of technology, birth control, and rational self-interest. The same thing that has happened in lots of the developed world is now happening in the developing world. It will continue to become the new norm. That doesn't lead to some doomsday scenario. Sorry to disappoint.

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Another optimist.

Actually, I'm glad you are being positive. It's better to live your life thinking the glass is half full. Are you a Hans Rosling devotee?

My concern is that you, he and other population-decline prognosticators have a skewed view of humanity as the species relates to its habitat. The science of population statistics is unsteady at best and perilous in its inconsistency.

The world is a big place and no one can say with precision what the true population is. So, regrettably, many demographers choose to use info from "developed" countries and then project those results on the "developing" countries.

At this point we have to define developed country: A country with a lot of industrial activity and where people generally have high incomes (from Cambridge Dictionaries Online).

A developing country is defined as "a country having a standard of living or level of industrial activity well below that possible with financial or technical aid; a country that is not yet highly industrialized."

The common words in these definitions are industrial and activity. If you're not using your resources in industry, you can't qualify as a developed country. Everybody should be like the U. S. and Europe.

See where I'm going with my "unrealistic view of humanity" accusation? Neither you nor anyone with your view of the world, in my experience, associates preservation (dare I say improvement) of the environment with "developed country." The assumption is that you think humanity has dominion over the earth and its resources.

Now, back to population growth, while the growth rate is currently an estimated (because an estimation is the best that can be done considering the earth's current political, social and educational statuses) and seemingly steady 1.1%, it's enough to insure the total population by the end of this century will be well beyond what the planet's resources can support.

Until the "developed" countries decide that growth is a bad thing and that population decline is a good thing, and spread this message to countries that want to "be like the Joneses," it's difficult for a lot of us to be optimistic about our species' and our planet's future.

An apology to RogertheShrubber:

You were right and I was confused about the growth rate of the world's population. Mea culpa.

It's not that I didn't/don't understand it so much as it is that I simply don't respect the data that's bandied about as though it's precise. We are not a world that's unified and homogeneous. There's just no way to accurately project growth for the world the way some western societies can for their countries.

Notice that I didn't specifically list the U.S. because of the uncertainty about our own population considering the unknown number of illegal aliens living here.

I sincerely hope my faux pas didn't negatively affect your enjoyment of the discussion.