The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above nine billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday morning.
With most in Asia and Africa.
Triassic Sands
Two’s company; ten billion’s a crowd.
alwhite
There are not enough resources to sustain the 7 billion we currently have, 10 billion should be very interesting.
Mark S.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of oil for everyone. No need to look into any alternative energies.
Alex S.
I was hardly accustomed to the fact that there are 6 billion people on this planet and now I hear that we’ll pass the 7 billion mark this year. This is happening too fast for my taste.
Redwood Rhiadra
To be honest, I think the actual human population in 2100 will be under a billion. Every new piece of information about global warming shows it’s much worse than we thought previously – I think it’s already too late, the planet is in an irreversible death spiral, thanks to the GOP and their ideological allies.
BerkeleyMom
Gee, you’d think we might need an organization called Planned Parenthood.
Gin & Tonic
Good thing I’ll be dead then.
Dennis SGMM
@Mark S.:
They will simply render down the excess population to make biodiesel. “Soylent Diesel is people!”
Citizen_X
Sorry to go completely OT and inject humer into an important topic like this, but John: here’s one of your fellow West Virginians, a-celebratin’ the death of bin Laden the only way he knows how. Or as he puts it, “Because I can. That’s why.”
(Of course, my first reaction was, “Hey! It’s my cousin!”)
Seriously, I watched that shit three times. If I could somehow make that video my avatar, I would.
TooManyPaulWs
what everyone is forgetting is that we’ll have stargate technology in another 40 years and we’ll be colonizing Ceti Alpha V within 15 years of that.
As long as Ceti Alpha VI doesn’t explode and the ear worms get loose.
Joe Beese
I won’t mind the 10 billion people as long as they don’t try to filch any of the 25% of global resources that we currently consume.
The American way of life is non-negotiable. They’ll just have to make do with the other 75%.
MikeJ
@alwhite:
apparently there aren’t enough resources to keep b-j.com running. Need to upgrade from hamsters to ferrets.
“It’s not just you! https://balloon-juice.com looks down from here. ” according to http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com
Mike E
@alwhite:
fix’t.
Walker
@alwhite:
Exactly. Has carrying-capacity been figured into the UN report?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Everyone will be famous for 15 nanoseconds
/Andy Warhol, updated for the 22nd Cen.
Poopyman
The planet will self–correct. I don’t know whether it’ll be a virus or bacteria, but we’re barely keeping ahead of the mutations now.
And I wanted to stick around and see what happens next, too.
cleek
in the history of doomsday population predictions, has anyone ever been correct ?
WereBear
It’s all the damn life saving we liberals do.
gbear
Well, to be fair, the planet itself is not in an irreversible death spiral, just the planet that can sustain human life. Once, we’re gone (or have frittered ourselves back to the stone age), things might not be the same on good ol’ earth, but life of some sort will go on just fine without us, thank you.
jon
@Redwood Rhiadra: If by “the GOP and their ideological allies” you mean everyone who has lived, lives or wants to live as if everything is and always will be abundant, you get to include the entire Western world. The party’s going to be over. But the way China’s building roads, the party’s just begun for some people. And if you think we’re going to change this overnight, you obviously haven’t been watching the party.
MattR
@cleek: Nostradamusaur?
balconesfault
Just wait until climate change starts forcing mass migrations …
that won’t be any trouble at all.
Tuffy
I’m going to channel Friedman and point out that China’s one-child policy is visionary.
Mike Kay (Team America)
maybe the gays are on to something
Mike Kay (Team America)
10 billion !?! Geez! Someone tell Palin to close her legs!
Villago Delenda Est
The planet will still be here.
There won’t be any humans to fret about it, though.
Keith G
I think the natural forces collectively know as Mother Nature are going to have a lot to say about population levels in the next 100 yrs. With fisheries and forests gone, arable land drying out, current coastal plains going under water, and the armed conflicts that all of the above will cause, a decrease in population is highly likely.
Notice that I did not even include the conflicts over fossile fuels and fresh water.
Fun times, fewer folks.
DFH no.6
Single largest problem the human race faces, along with our dear Mother Earth (unless a large enough asteroid hits us in the meantime, I suppose).
Whether cleek or anyone else believes it or not (sorta like the attendant issue of anthropogenic global climate change).
Sure, in the long term the biosphere of our planet will adjust and be fine, as it has from the beginning, but in the short term (say, scores or even hundreds of thousands of years) not so much.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I would like to see the Libertian freemarket solution for the planet’s population pushing the resources. Nothing that invisible hand of wars, revolution, famines and pandemics can’t solve.
Arclite
@Mark S.:
It’s less energy than it is food. The green revolution was successful due to cheap fossil fuels used to create fertilizer, run farm equipment, ship and refrigerate food, etc. There isn’t a single step in the production of food that doesn’t involve fossil fuels that, if removed, would cause the entire system to collapse.
gbear
Also, too, bees will have a lot to say about how many humans that earth can support.
Anoniminous
@cleek:
Not really. But then the “Ever-growing Population” folks haven’t been accurate either. Both camps are using statistical mechanics as the basis to analyze a Complex non-linear dynamic phenomenon.
See the Wikipedia article on the Feigenbaum Function for an introduction.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Poopyman: The planet will self—correct. I don’t know whether it’ll be a virus or bacteria, but we’re barely keeping ahead of the mutations now.
And in even more surprising ways! I believe that the anti-vaccination craze was actually caused by agents working on behalf of the Measles.
kdaug
@cleek:
Planet’s never had 10B primates striping it’s resources. Doesn’t really matter, though – in a 100 million years, we’ll be the oil. (Hell, Easter Island might even have trees again).
Arclite
@Tuffy:
With India about to supercede China as the world’s most populous nation, it was a good policy to help limit population growth. On the other hand, China’s population has grown from 1b to 1.2b since that policy was put into place, so it didn’t completely limit growth.
Violet
@Arclite:
I recently heard a podcast talking about water resources and how countries that are importing grain are actually importing water and the cheapest way to import water is to import grain.
Did you know that Saudi Arabia started to phase out growing wheat because its aquifer is nearly depleted. By 2012 they’ll be a grain importer.
gbear
@Citizen_X: I like how the flag keeps trying to slap him upside the head in the last half of that video.
Kane
A whole lot of f-ing going on.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Joe Beese:
Every fourth rate service based paper shuffling insurance guy, mortgage broker or small bidnessman is entitled to a 6000 sq ft Texas McManse for his family of 4, a 3000 sq foot SUV and a yard that he can pay somebody to water, mow and landscape.
Roger Moore
@gbear:
As a human, that distinction seems rather academic to me.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
We desperately need to do away with poverty. This would be reason number, what, 17,339? Populations even off and maybe even might drop some when people earn enough to lead decent lives. There are enough moral reasons to work on ending poverty, Lord knows, but there are practical ones, too. We’re all better off when three fourths of the world’s people aren’t mired in the most wretched poverty imaginable, living in foul slums.
Not that I have any great hope that we in this country will do anything to lead the way on this, but we sure as hell ought to. There was a time when Americans felt like we could do anything, overcome anything. We took on big tasks, and more often than not, we pulled it off. Sad to say, seems like those days are behind us.
Keith G
Severely OT, but I was just looking at pictures of Osama’s “million dollar” compound.
Cinder blocks, crudely finished walls, shitty landscaping. He was totally fucked over by his contractor.
kdaug
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
Ooooo – do want!
Dave
Forget oil and food. The big battle will be over water. You can live without oil. You can find local food sources. But water? Without that you’re just dead.
Cermet
@cleek: You don’t read very much about technology or science relative population by that ridiculous statement you just made here – if you did read a bit on this topic, you would realize that most of those people were absolutely correct in their predictions. For their level of technology at the time the resources available would not support the populations that were growing – levels we have now exceeded.
This was due to unforeseeable advances that had they known about, they would have adjusted their predictions and gotten answers more in line with what we now predict. No matter what technology we develop over the next five years, we cannot support both increasing populations and increase quality of life. This is very simple to understand with a few examples: like extracting oil, there are diminishing returns from all sources relative to energy cost to exact the desired and available resource.
Minerals work the same way – iron ores, all the best high values ones are long gone and we now must work on ores that provide far less iron metal per ton of ore. We are now seeing this pattern hold for all minerals and that is amazing to have this happen with so many resources.
Growing food from existing land is a major issue because first, there is less available land due to human expansion, less soil due to erosion, less fertile soil due to more need to plant every year, and fertilizer costs are soaring yet oil to make it is fast approaching peak supply.
This does not even take into consideration Global Warming and the terrible toll on food production as farmers try (and often fail) to adjust to the radically changing climate. That can not be folded into the predictions except to know that it will drive population downward but in the most terrible manner. Lost of predictable water resources is the worst and mot dire aspect and will lead to more wars as these conditions bite.
Even if these current tends are wrong and we get another 30 years, really no difference since that only gets us to 2042 – almost sixty more years of massive consumption of all resources as AGW gets far, far worse.
PeakVT
There will be humans around 1000 years from now. But unless a miracle occurs (either cheap 50% efficient PV cells or workable fusion or similar), there will be a lot fewer and they’ll be living pretty shitty lives on a much smaller portion of the earth’s surface.
Mark S.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Technology fairies will save the day. This guy was the leading proponent. I always assumed he was a scientist of some sort, but Wikipedia says his specialty was business administration.
srv
Climate change will make much of Siberia and Canuckaberia much more hospitable.
Aussies can move to Antartica.
Keith G
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Reason #2 as to why the Catholic Church needs to change or be nuked. Even Jesus would vomit at their prohibitions on birth control.
Anoniminous
@jon:
When a complex system shifts to a new regime it tend to do it in the blink of an eye. One problem is “a blink of an eye” in planetary terms is a long time in human terms. With the accelerating affective changes going on I’d be VERY surprised if we don’t start seeing substantial – apparent even to Conservatives – changes in this decade. The start of depopulation should occur sometime in the 2017-2025 time frame; a combination of Global Climate Change, dwindling availability of food in Africa and Asia (esp. protein,) and anti-biotic resistant strains of bacteria should combine to achieve – if that’s the word I want – the result.
BR
No it really won’t. This projection is way off the mark because it ignores the Limits to Growth. (Get the book by Meadows by the title – it’s one book everyone needs to read.)
Arclite
@cleek:
Both global warming and peak oil are quantifiable, predictable events that have catastrophic consequences. If you are increasing the speed of a car to 100mph while approaching a hair pin curve, a scientist can predict you will crash without having to spell out the exact details of how that will happen.
cleek
@Cermet:
as opposed to today, where we can predict the future perfectly because we already know everything there is to know. yeah, i’d forgotten about that part.
cleek
@Arclite:
probably. but the article is not about those things.
Citizen_X
@cleek:
Obviously, we haven’t been through global catastrophe and population crash, so no, not yet. Why wait to run the experiment out?
Look, we’ve changed our behavior before on the basis of scientific predictions that were too terrifying to face:
1) No two nations have ever had a nuclear war, but just about any nuclear war games–a form of psychological experiment, if you will, using the actual decision makers–showed how quickly things would spiral out of control. So we pulled back from the brink in the Cuban missile crisis, and we’ve entered into several rounds of disarmament talks.
2) We didn’t complete the add-fluorocarbons-to-the-atmosphere experiment, because measurement and computer models showed that we were already depleting the ozone layer, and would destroy it utterly if we continued. So we stopped using those compounds, and the ozone hole has pretty much stabilized.
3) The obvious counterexample: catastrophic (+5 deg. C) AGW. We have failed thus far to lower our carbon outputs, and the global climate is pretty much responding as predicted, except where it’s actually worse. In other words, scientific prediction hasn’t failed, human will has.
If there have been any “failures” of population warnings, it’s that they did not predict the Green Revolution. As mentioned above, though, the strains involved require huge inputs of oil-based fertilizer and pesticide, as well as water. Oil and water are going to be huge problems in the next couple of generations. We are not going to solve these problems by arm-waving about how new technology will save us. That is an appeal to faith, not a critique of population warnings.
Just Some Fuckhead
Geez, it’s hard to know who to trust when you can’t tell who’s a lawyer. Oh well, I’ll just stick to my strategy of making the world safer for my children by killing other children.
Sharl
We’ll do for future ecosystems what oxygen-generating bacteria once did for us. [That link sourced this.]
Paying it forward… for someone/thing. You’re welcome, unknown future beneficiary species!
Cain
@gbear:
This. The only people we hurt is ourselves. Because eventually, we’ll be gone and life will continue and new species will evolve.. we got millions years of life yet before the sun turns red.
Poopyman
@Keith G: Location, location, location.
Citizen_X
@Mark S.: Oh god, Julian Simon. The guy who said, “copper can be made from other metals.” Sure…all you have to do is build a star going nova, and you’ll make lots of copper!
cleek
@Citizen_X:
didn’t say we should. merely noted that we have a long record of terrible predictions.
obviously, we should do what we can. and i suspect we will. it will take a little pain to get most people to do what’s necessary, and we’re not at the point of pain yet.
but panicked pearl-clutching about the imminent (just X years left!) demise of everything isn’t going to accomplish much – besides causing people to roll their eyes and resist the necessary changes, that is.
Zifnab
@Roger Moore:
As an academic, would the distinction seem humane?
Zifnab
@Citizen_X: In all fairness, we produce a lot of waste. I mean, take a look at plastic. That shit isn’t going anywhere, and we’ve got landfills miles long and miles deep.
Once prices hit the right level, it’ll be more efficient to recycle than it is to mine. If we can’t control ourselves via government, market forces will slap us upside the head before we officially “run out”. Same with oil. It’s not about the day we drain the last drop. It’s about the day running the drill isn’t worth the price of the resource.
I mean, the whole reason we use so much copper is because its cheap and abundant.
Citizen_X
@cleek:
Actually, the Limits to Growthpeople were pretty much bang on. (Second link’s a pdf.)
Barb (formerly Gex)
@BerkeleyMom: What? You don’t think the Pope’s “Condoms spread AIDS” outreach program is helpful?
Spaghetti Lee
Don’t worry. We’ll have all uploaded our bodies onto the internet where we can be free forever, and only poor people will starve to death
Church Lady
@Keith G:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country
I don’t think the Catholic Church’s prohibition against birth control has a whole lot to do with the population explosions in these areas of the world.
kdaug
@Cain:
Precisely. Species come and go, planets come and go, suns come and go. As far as we know, universes come and go.
Life and death are the nature of existence. We are not immune.
ETA: Lifespans may vary.
PeakVT
@Cain: Billions of years, though the sun is getting hotter by about 6% per billion years. That will push the inner edge of the goldilocks zone past the earth in maybe 0.5-1.0B billion years.
alwhite
@Mike E:
I agree but usually I catch hell around here for being so pessimistic so I thought I’d be a little less gloom-n-doom.
Keith G
@Church Lady:
You are right. Imagine how screwed we would be if Bene held sway over large chunks of Asia. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t doing his damnest to fuck things up in Latin America and Africa.
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
Back in the Nineties I wrote a sci-fi short story about future garbage miners. It was very dystopic and I never managed to sell the thing. Maybe I should freshen it up and try again.
Mark S.
Here’s an interesting graph on how long it has taken to add an additional billion.
Davis X. Machina
Small changes along the way make for big changes in that final number.
People compound just like interest. You can get 8 billion or twelve, small changes in rate cause big swings because of the long delta-t.
Three years’ difference in the age at which a woman has her first child, for example.
Hawes
What mostly concerns me, is that when the zombie plague comes, there will be that many more zombies.
Arclite
@Violet:
That’s really interesting. If we can avoid depleting our aquifers, maybe we will have the Saudi’s over the barrel as much as they have us over one. If not, we’ll all be a lot thinner.
Arclite
@cleek:
Not directly, but both of those issues are essentially caused by the massive population of the planet.
Cermet
@cleek: You can’t read or just refuse to learn? The predictions have not been terrible but very good much of the time when experts have done them – as I told you but you just don’t understand, no one can forsee break throughs until they happen. Try learning insteading of making stupid statements.
mclaren
No it won’t. We’ll get a Malthusian dieoff long before we get anywhere near 10.1 billion people on earth, or for that matter 9 billion people.
In less than 50 years scientists say all aquatic life will be fished out of the oceans. The earth’s already 6-plus-billion people have already run out of fresh water, and global warming is going to wipe out the snow melt from the Himalayas, which will dry up the sources of two of the earth’s three great rivers (the Yangtze and the Ganges) within 50 years.
Without the Yangtze and the Ganges to provide irrigation, you’re going to see mass starvation on a scale never before witnessed by humanity.
mclaren
@cleek:
Do you have any evidence to back up that unsubstantiated and provably false claim?
The Club of Rome projection “Limits To Growth” from 30 years ago is bang on target and is currently coming true.
M. King Hubbert’s Peak Oil projections from 1956 are on target and currently coming true.
Global warming predictions made back in the 1950s (Roger Revelle and Hans Suess) are coming true, albeit somewhat faster than predicted.
Which of these major predictions from 30 and 40 and 50 years ago is “terrible”?
Reputable scientists have been aware for more than half a century that runaway global warming and uncontrolled oil usage and runaway global population growth would have dire consequences. People like Cleek ridiculed these thousands of scientists by calling people like Al Gore “fat” and by sneering that “they have big houses that generate lots of CO2.” Out here in the real world, the scientists’ predictions have been recognized as accurate for more than half a century. Nobody wanted to admit this because it would mean such drastic changes in the way we live our lives and in the way our cities and our transportation infrastructure are organized. Much easier for spoiled three-year-olds like cleek (whose answer to any problem is to hide his head like an ostrich in the sand, with his “pie filter”) to scream and bang their little baby spoons against their highchairs rather than face the brutal realities implied by these scientists’ predictions.
Zorro
World human population may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100.
No, it won’t. If it can’t happen it won’t happen. We cannot support that many people on this planet.
Paul in KY
@Redwood Rhiadra: People are pretty resiliant. I fear more for the death of various animal species than I do for the death of 9 billion people (as you surmise).
Paul in KY
@Keith G: I was saying in another thread that for an Islamic Lex Luthor, he didn’t have alot of the anti personnel devices I would have expected.
It all looks sorta half-assed, I have to say.
Paul in KY
@PeakVT: I wonder how much hotter a 12% rise in sunlight would make the planet. 50 million years ago, the Earth was a jungle hell from pole to pole. No ice caps, average temperature 90 degrees farenheit, sea levels 200 feet higher, etc. etc.
That was one of the most productive times ever for mammel evolution.