3 ms·

Typical of exponential population growth. The past few years of any resource usage will be more than all of the resource usage of human history combined.

Shivetya 12y ago
well that and their housing will be built with cement while a great amount of US housing is wood frame construction. Still its a demonstration of unbound budgets. The future cost of maintaining it all will be the test of time. While much has been made of China's ghost towns quite a few are getting people yet I am curious as to the maintenance being done and in a timely manner. There is also the question of quality, there have been a few newsworthy stories out of China of shoddy construction.
spikels 12y ago
Population growth is not exponential but actually slowing. This is one of many misconceptions about demographics - an absolutely fascinating and important subject which gets little attention in the media or schools. Here's a nice intro from Joel Cohen, a longtime leader in the field: http://www.floatinguniversity.com/lectures-cohen http://www.floatinguniversity.com/lectures-cohen
- ngokevin 12y ago
  The rate may be slowing (as expected), but the overall rate has been exponential until now. Like it took us forever to get to 1 billion, but getting to 7 billion took no time at all from that point.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - spikels 12y ago
    If the growth rate is slowing it is not exponential - a constant growth rate is the definition of exponential[1]. After increasing dramatically during the first half of the 20th century the growth rate has declined for the last 40 years. Looking more deeply into the demographics (by country and age group) it is pretty clear that this decline will continue for many decades to come. The video I linked above goes into some of this. Most experts currently predict that the world's population will peak (i.e. below zero population growth) middle of this century around 9 billion - although a few say as high as 11 billion or as low as 7 billion. These predictions are way down from just a decade ago. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
jordanthoms 12y ago
It's frankly amazing that people are still going on about population growth. Anyone who looks at the trends - people are getting richer and moving to cities at a massive rate, and when people do that they go from having 6+ children to two or less - knows that population growth is slowing fast, and will continue to. Population growth excluding immigration is already negative across much of the western world, and will be the case everywhere before long. In fact, the bigger issue in the western world, and eventually the whole would will be dealing with it, is what happens when this slowdown in births happens. Just as when you got a huge economic boom from having many young people, you get a economic drag when all those people age and have less young people to support them.

Shivetya 12y ago

well that and their housing will be built with cement while a great amount of US housing is wood frame construction. Still its a demonstration of unbound budgets. The future cost of maintaining it all will be the test of time. While much has been made of China's ghost towns quite a few are getting people yet I am curious as to the maintenance being done and in a timely manner. There is also the question of quality, there have been a few newsworthy stories out of China of shoddy construction.

spikels 12y ago

Population growth is not exponential but actually slowing. This is one of many misconceptions about demographics - an absolutely fascinating and important subject which gets little attention in the media or schools. Here's a nice intro from Joel Cohen, a longtime leader in the field: http://www.floatinguniversity.com/lectures-cohen http://www.floatinguniversity.com/lectures-cohen

ngokevin 12y ago
The rate may be slowing (as expected), but the overall rate has been exponential until now. Like it took us forever to get to 1 billion, but getting to 7 billion took no time at all from that point.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- spikels 12y ago
  If the growth rate is slowing it is not exponential - a constant growth rate is the definition of exponential[1]. After increasing dramatically during the first half of the 20th century the growth rate has declined for the last 40 years. Looking more deeply into the demographics (by country and age group) it is pretty clear that this decline will continue for many decades to come. The video I linked above goes into some of this. Most experts currently predict that the world's population will peak (i.e. below zero population growth) middle of this century around 9 billion - although a few say as high as 11 billion or as low as 7 billion. These predictions are way down from just a decade ago. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

jordanthoms 12y ago

It's frankly amazing that people are still going on about population growth. Anyone who looks at the trends - people are getting richer and moving to cities at a massive rate, and when people do that they go from having 6+ children to two or less - knows that population growth is slowing fast, and will continue to. Population growth excluding immigration is already negative across much of the western world, and will be the case everywhere before long. In fact, the bigger issue in the western world, and eventually the whole would will be dealing with it, is what happens when this slowdown in births happens. Just as when you got a huge economic boom from having many young people, you get a economic drag when all those people age and have less young people to support them.