10% of all the people who have ever lived are alive today

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Grasshopper27

Banned
Sep 11, 2002
7,013
1
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One-tenth of all the people who have ever lived on the planet are alive today. We are adding new humans at a rate of 78 million a year, and projections are that we will continue to do so for most of the next decade. On average, women around the world today have 2.7 children, a dramatic drop from the five they had in the 1950s.
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http://www.geobop.com/World/Facts/Population/

Scroll to the bottom of the page for the table of people and quotes.

World population passed about three billion in 1960 before Paul Ehrlich published his bestseller, The Population Bomb, in 1968.

The five billionth baby isn't even a teenager yet, having been born in 1987. It took all of human history until 1800 for the population to reach its first billion; the second took only until 1930. A mere 69 years later, six billion will be crowding the planet.

India's population reached one-billion in May 2000, growing from one quarter billion in 1900.
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Slow Down!

Obviously, Earth can't support an unlimited number of people. It may not even be able to support the current population indefinitely. Our planet certainly couldn't support six billion people if they all used resources at the rate United States citizens do.

In global terms, we're unbelievably wealthy. In fact, 20 percent of the world's people now own about 80 percent of its wealth. And it isn't just the United States and a few other wealthy nations against the rest of the world. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing within the United States and other industrialized nations.
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Since we're not going to get 20% of the planet to somehow give up their weath and "things", expanding off the planet is the only reasonable option.

Why we're not pouring vast sums of money into space is beyond my ability to understand. We'll never have enough money or resources to "solve the world's problems" here, we must find them off planet.

Global Population

1850 - 1.26-billion
1900 - 1.65-billion
1950 - 2.52-billion
1960 - 3.02-billion
1970 - 3.70-billion
1980 - 4.44-billion
1990 - 5.27-billion
1999 - 6.00-billion
2020 - 7.50-billion
2050 - 8.91-billion
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At the rate that is going, we're going to run out of space in a real big hurry... We've already started to threaten the earth's ability to support human life. Since we cannot turn back time and put all our technology genies back in the bottle (not that we'd really want to anyway), expanding off planet seems like the only option that has any reasonable chance of working.

Grasshopper
 
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HappyPuppy

Lifer
Apr 5, 2001
16,997
2
71
How in the world would you ship 50 to 70 million people a year off-planet? Where the hell would they go? There are no habitable planets in our solar system.

A more likely scenario for alleviating the population problem is that an incurable plague will pop up some day and wipe out 90% of the Earth's population. The survivors will start over.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
David Brin and L. E. Modesitt have written some good SF books set after the "ecollapse" we seem to be heading towards.

Unfortunately most people in power aren't thinking about 50 years from now, just about the next election (or coup attempt). And most citizens aren't thinking much beyond the next weekend.
 
AreaCode707

AreaCode707

Lifer
Sep 21, 2001
18,447
133
106
That statistic poses a problem (presuming you're an evolutionist). When do you start counting life forms as human? Do they count when they're still ape-men? Slime molds? Fully recognizable humans?
 
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Grasshopper27

Banned
Sep 11, 2002
7,013
1
0
Originally posted by: HappyPuppy
How in the world would you ship 50 to 70 million people a year off-planet? Where the hell would they go? There are no habitable planets in our solar system.
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We need to make Mars habitable...

How to ship them off? How many people get on an airliner every day? A year?

A more likely scenario for alleviating the population problem is that an incurable plague will pop up some day and wipe out 90% of the Earth's population. The survivors will start over.
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I'm not sure that will happen, more likely a massive war...

Grasshopper
 
E

Eli

Super Moderator | Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
50,419
8
81
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
David Brin and L. E. Modesitt have written some good SF books set after the "ecollapse" we seem to be heading towards.

Unfortunately most people in power aren't thinking about 50 years from now, just about the next election (or coup attempt). And most citizens aren't thinking much beyond the next weekend.
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People are so clueless, it isn't even funny...

They estimate that by 2060, some 50% of the worlds biodiversity will be gone.

We lose more than 12 species a day, including microorganisms. :Q
 
0roo0roo

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,795
84
91
1st world nations are fine. its dem 3rd world peeps that are f*cking like bunnies.

certain mystical beliefs against contraception being spread by missionaries aren't helping either:p
 
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McPhreak

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2000
3,808
1
0
Originally posted by: HotChic
That statistic poses a problem (presuming you're an evolutionist). When do you start counting life forms as human? Do they count when they're still ape-men? Slime molds? Fully recognizable humans?
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Even if you were to throw in the earliest forms of humans/apes and assuming slime molds aren't human, it wouldn't put a dent in that number. 6 billion is a big number you know.
 
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Grasshopper27

Banned
Sep 11, 2002
7,013
1
0
Originally posted by: HotChic
That statistic poses a problem (presuming you're an evolutionist). When do you start counting life forms as human? Do they count when they're still ape-men? Slime molds? Fully recognizable humans?
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Hey HC, what's up?

The numbers from back then are so small, I doubt they exceed the margin of error.

Prior to the last 200 years, there were only a few hundred million people around.

Back in the BC era, there were only a few tens of millions. Several thousand years ago there were only a few million.

In the time when humans were near ape like, I think there might have been less than a million.

Who really knows, there is probably still a lot of guess work in those figures, but we probably can estimate the populations for the past 2,000 years really well, and considering how few people lived between year 1 and year 1,800, the numbers make sense.

Grasshopper
 
O

Orsorum

Lifer
Dec 26, 2001
27,631
5
81
The unfortunate fact of population growth is that it's exponential. The more people exist, the faster we breed.

IMO, the key to all of this is education and birth control. Mmm... I'll write a bit more in a few minutes (going upstairs)
 
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HappyPuppy

Lifer
Apr 5, 2001
16,997
2
71
Originally posted by: McPhreak
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its dem 3rd world peeps that are f*cking like bunnies.
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DAMN THOSE MORMONS!!!! :|







;)
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Hey, what's wrong with Mormons? I'm not one, but I've seen a few I'd like to .......er, never mind.
 
Evadman

Evadman

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Feb 18, 2001
30,990
5
81
I think we should just take the safety labels off of all products and let the issue solve itself.
 
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Cyberian

Diamond Member
Jun 17, 2000
9,999
1
0
Originally posted by: Zakath15
The unfortunate fact of population growth is that it's exponential. The more people exist, the faster we breed.
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Thank God for college education.
 
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bizmark

Banned
Feb 4, 2002
2,311
0
0
HELLO?!

the solution isn't shipping people off into space. The solution is to keep people from having so many children.

But really this is kind of just crying wolf IMO. Look at the population statistics for England and other now-First-World countries back in the 1700s and 1800s -- the period of the Industrial Revolution. It was phenomenol. Britain's population tripled in the 100 year period 1750-1850 and doubled from 1800-1850. However, over time, people there learned to not have so many kids and their birth rate is now around the maintanence level. People in Africa/India/Asia will learn to do the same, in due time. It's just a growing pain.
 
0roo0roo

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,795
84
91
Originally posted by: Cyberian
Originally posted by: Zakath15
The unfortunate fact of population growth is that it's exponential. The more people exist, the faster we breed.
Click to expand...
Thank God for college education.
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why? college makes u less likely to breed?

well yea it does work that way:)

oh well:p

it can only remain exponential if supplies are unlimited anyways:p people already starve around the world, sucks for them:p
 
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