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World Population Growth
- AlaskaCasey 10y agoWith the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria I wonder if this projection of exponential growth and then plateau will happen sooner.
- Symmetry 10y agoThe population was rising before the first antibiotic was discovered so I'm guessing that it won't make all that much of a difference. In general public sanitation made a much larger difference in the reduction in death by infectious disease since the 19th century than medicine has.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoAnd ironically Public Health is the lowest, least respected medical specialization. Doctors practicing that earn like plumbers or construction workers. Yet we all own them our collective health and well-being.
- dzdt 10y agoPeak population will be a huge paradigm shift for the world economy. For the entire history of the world we have relied on growth, and the main deiver of economic growth has been population growth. No more!
- cpplinuxdude 10y agoIf they have their way then Nestle's bottled water will really be a luxury item you can't live without. Most likely quite literally.
- contingencies 10y agoIn much of Asia most of the population already buys potable water in bottles. Current prices (China) are about USD$0.10/L (delivered).
- dingo_bat 10y agoSame here in bangalore, India. Price is USD 0.052/L delivered.
- WildUtah 10y agoPeak population isn't coming in the next few centuries. The 2008 UN data these charts are based on had mistaken data on African growth. African fertility is much higher than expected then and continues not to fall. The later 2100s in these charts now look to add several more billion and growing, almost all in Africa. Or from Africa; migration from poorer and overcrowded countries means Europe will probably be majority African by 2100 and have several hundred million more than shown in these charts also. The post-2008 revisions of UN projections are quite sobering about the future and sustainability of humanity. We are not on a path to sustainability. We are cratering full speed toward a potential Great Filter.
- weatherlight 10y agoI really don't think earth is going to be able to support 9 billion people without some sort of dramatic paradigm shift in the way, as a species, we consume things
- WildUtah 10y agoWe're well on our way to 15+ billion without pause on the current UN projections, so hang on for a scary ride.
- Frogolocalypse 10y agoAll I can say is, if you want to maintain that standard of living in western democracies, you'd better get used to immigration.
- ArtemZ 10y agoWhat is the connection between high living standards and immigration?
- collyw 10y agoMy simplistic version is that our economy is basically a ponzi scheme that needs new entrants to fuel the "growth".
- eveningcoffee 10y agoActually not the children, as they are the expense It needs the people in the productive age. Immigration of young adults is economically the best solution in short term as it leaves the expense of growing them up to the other societies.
- collyw 10y agoAssuming they will be economically active.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoWell, yes. And do not trying intentionally destroy your society.
- wolfgke 10y ago> It needs the people in the productive age. Immigration of young adults is economically the best solution in short term as it leaves the expense of growing them up to the other societies. And introduces pension problems for pension systems that are based on an inter-generational contract.
- Frogolocalypse 10y agoOne thing that is a little bit off in the analysis is the statement "China, India and Africa are (and have been for a long time) the most populous regions in the world" Actually, according to that data, Africa only overtook Europe in population between 1980 and 1990. I remember when that happened, because I'd always assumed Africa had far more people. They will, but it hasn't been for 'a long time'. It was quite recent really.
- dagaci 10y agoUntil extremely recently Africa has (with the exception of the Nile delta) been very under-populated. Even today it's regions do not rank amongst the most populated regions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density (with the exception of the Nile delta) Historically Africa had very little population growth compared to the tiny population that survived the "out-of-africa" exit. I would speculate: part of the reasoning for this would be the lack of domesticable livestock, and why that would occur in the place where humans had evolved from simple inefficient sapiens.
- WildUtah 10y agoWith the Sahara and Kalahari, Africa will be desperately overpopulated long before it matches Europe or China for total density. There's simply a vast and growing uninhabitable fraction of land in Africa. Increasing population pressure is actually already causing desertification that make it worse.
- hx87 10y agoScarcity of reliably arable land combined with extreme disease burdens probably have something to do with that.
- Frogolocalypse 10y agoIt's actually much more simple. It's just urbanization vs rural. As urbanization increases, population density can increase. Until very recently Africa was mostly rural.
- amelius 10y agoSee also Hans Rosling's TED talk on the subject, [1]. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_...
- Symmetry 10y agoIf there are heritable traits that lead to people having more kids in a developed world environment then at some point evolution will take over and we'll start to see exponential growth again.
- pc86 10y agoI... what?
- WildUtah 10y agoYes. The only way to long run sustainability is central control of population with mandatory birth limits or unlimited expansion of land area to extraterrestrial territory. Otherwise evolution will always exceed its limits and produce a crash. Malthus explained it all mathematically 200 years ago, even before Darwin documented the mechanisms.
- b_emery 10y ago> The only way to long run sustainability is central control of population with mandatory birth limits This is demonstrably not true. Look at Japan and western Europe: declining population. Its a function of economic situation (no need for more than 1-3 children) and female reproductive choice. If we give that to the world, the population problem goes away. The mathematics of population dynamics work for animals, roughly, but the assumptions don't hold for humans because of the changes in behavior.
- WildUtah 10y agoThere are people, even in Japan, that want a whole mess of children. That preference is heritable. Each generation has more of these people because they're the ones that reproduce. Eventually those fertile and natal enthusiasts will dominate the population and exponential growth resumes. The current situation is a temporary response to an external shock, specifically to reliable contraception. But Malthusian conditions will return; Darwinism requires it.
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- newscracker 10y agoIf you ever want to feel really old, go to Population.io [1], enter your date of birth and country (fake it a bit if you wish), and look at how many people in the world are currently younger than you. This is both fascinating and shocking even if you enter the information for any smaller children you know (from the last decade or so). [1]: http://population.io http://population.io
- dominotw 10y agothank India.
- sumedh 10y agoYou are expected to live 40.1 years as a citizen of India Well that is depressing.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoNot really. You're expected to die in childhood. Survive that, you'll likely live about as long as anybody anywhere else.
- eru 10y agoClose, but not quite. Ie at age 30, the site gives me 53.4 more years in Germany, and 42.1 in India.
- lloyd-christmas 10y agoA glance at the methodology shows that they account for that. https://github.com/worldpopulation/population.io-api/tree/master/modeling https://github.com/worldpopulation/population.io-api/tree/ma...
- MollyR 10y agoThis is an anecdote. I have coworker friend who is from india, and he told me most of the men in his family die from heart attacks from age 40-50. I thought it was weird as heck, but when I researched it showed they had 4x for heart issues against the general population in america. https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/south-asians-heart-disease-qa.html https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2015/sout...
- skolos 10y agoInteresting article, but most graphs would be more readable if they would use log scale.
- WildUtah 10y agoAlso if the timeline could be adjusted. Lots of things are more interesting if the first 4500 years of no data could be skipped so we could actually see the recent developments.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoNot sure, I think that linear scale is more understood. My only complaint is that the graph 5 should have been ordered by the population growth rate because as it is now leave a bit distorted general picture.
- sampo 10y agoJust a note, in the first figure, the annual population growth rate is shown as the percentage of the population size at that time, not as absolute growth rate in number or humans added. Neither is more correct than other, but they are different ways to present things.
- dharma1 10y agoIn a large part thanks to this guy, who invented a process for extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere - an invention that now feeds half the Earth's human population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process Cheers, Fritz
- pmoriarty 10y agoRadiolab had a great episode on Haber: http://www.radiolab.org/story/180132-how-do-you-solve-problem-fritz-haber/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/180132-how-do-you-solve-proble...
- dharma1 10y agothat was a great listen, thanks
- falsestprophet 10y agoIn a large part thanks to this guy You mean due to the process discovered by Fritz Haber. It isn't the case that if he hadn't discovered the process in 1909 that in 2016 the human species would still be without it.
- dharma1 10y agoSure, just like if Einstein hadn't discovered relativity someone else possibly/probably would have. And maybe in another part of the multiverse someone else did. It's still interesting to trace back the chain of events that lead us to where we are today, and examine the agents of some of the most impactful events, however incidental they may be
- hx87 10y agoDon't forget Carl Bosch! Everyone forgets Bosch for some reason. You can't just have chemist discover a process, you need a chemical engineer to make it work on an industrial scale.
- Zigurd 10y agoThis paper http://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_capacity.pdf http://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_ca... by a UN group surveyed studies of the "carrying capacity" of the Earth. The bad news is that the largest number of studies say we are near the bounds of capacity. Worse, many studies say we have overshot sustainable capacity. But there many studies that claim carrying capacity is much higher than current population, and that the projected 16 billion simultaneous living humans is within capacity. It seems like whether we have a soft landing at the end of the oil age could dominate any calculation. The ability of renewables to scale up is only just crept past the starting line of a long, but necessarily urgent race. I'm not very enthusiastic about the odds.
- sytelus 10y agoAs population is one of the indicative of productivity (although a weak one), you can see how many big events were driven by population growth. For example, - During World War II, US had more people then Germany, France and UK combined. This certainly enabled deployment of massive armies on many front and huge amount of weapon production. - Japan's population suddenly started rising and overtook many western countries. Its increased productivity might be the reason why this tiny country felt it can take on the world. - India and China are odd balls. India had massive population since very early times compared to European countries. -Somewhere in 1870, US population crossed a threshold and became the most populated western country. -Population for 2100 AD is estimated at 10 billion.
- known 10y agoWith 15% of its population undernourished, India still has a serious hunger problem http://qz.com/807050/with-15-of-its-population-undernourished-india-still-has-a-serious-hunger-problem/ http://qz.com/807050/with-15-of-its-population-undernourishe...