World Population Increase

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TankAss95

TankAss95

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TankAss95
The UN has stated that the world population now stands at 7 billion. There are a diverse amount of predictions for the future, one stating that that figure may be doubled by the year 2100.
How will we face the difficulties that may arise in the future? Discuss.
 
Ask the Australians.

They manage a massive export market of crops and livestock while living on the driest continent on earth. Heck, they've just finished a 10 year drought. Their expertise just needs to spread to Africa and minimise the conflict and corruption of that great continent and they might have some self sufficiency.

And China/India, well they're gonna start eating potatoes instead of rice!
 
TankAss95
There are a diverse amount of predictions for the future, one stating that that figure may be doubled by the year 2100.
How will we face the difficulties that may arise in the future?
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ExigeEvan
Ask the Australians.
Heck, they've just finished a 10 year drought.
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"Prediction is very hard, especially about the future"
-- Yogi Berra

With that qualification, I'll multiply one prediction by another and guess that there will be problems with adequate amounts of fresh, clean water.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/25/us-population-water-idUSTRE79O3WO20111025
Will there be enough water for everyone, especially if population continues to rise, as predicted, to 9 billion by mid-century?

"There's a lot of water on Earth, so we probably won't run out," said Rob Renner, executive director of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation.

"The problem is that 97.5 percent of it is salty and ... of the 2.5 percent that's fresh, two-thirds of that is frozen. So there's not a lot of fresh water to deal with in the world."

Respectfully submitted,
Steve
 
If the population doubles then I feel sorry for the people of 2100. With that said, I don't think the population would be able to sustain itself to increase that much. If anything the population needs to decrease for quality of living.
 
I'm curious how high our population can grow before nature is like

OH%20NO%20YOU%20DI%20INT%20MICHELLE%20OBAMA.jpg


and sends a nasty plague our way. On thing is for sure, that as resources become more scarce, fighting over them will increase, and therefore more people will die trying to get what they need to live.
 
Or people will start using low-productive and cheaper land portions (Southern and Central Africa) as centres of food production and deal with the problem.

Some of the BRICS already have a massive productive capacity, take Brazil for an example, we could actually triple our agricultural production withouth running out of usable soil or water. Not to mention that improved pesticides and fertilizers, coupled to some degree of genetic manipulation might provide a constant increase in food production to keep up with the demand.

One would say that water would be a problem, it will be if we don't change the way we use it. Fresh water being used for washing the driveway and human waste is unnaceptable nowadays. Irrigation and desalination might solve the fresh water wasting at the fields, a change of culture and house-engineering is needed in order to change it in the cities.
 
Keef
I'm curious how high our population can grow before nature is like

OH%20NO%20YOU%20DI%20INT%20MICHELLE%20OBAMA.jpg


and sends a nasty plague our way. On thing is for sure, that as resources become more scarce, fighting over them will increase, and therefore more people will die trying to get what they need to live.
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Agreed. Eventually the population will stop growing, as the world cannot support that many people.
 
PHCharls
I wonder what will happen in china and India in the future.
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The one child policy in China keeps the limits level. Granted, it not going down any time soon but at least the population stays at a steady pace.

If you consider, for example, that it takes 2 people from a group of 20 to produce 1 child, all they are allowed, from those 20 people there can be only 10 offspring.

I like this method of population control. It's one way that can help a country to limit it's imports and therefore build it's internal economy.
 
A few thoughts:

- On childbirth and population growth, the number of kids people are having is actually dropping these days. So some reckon the actual rate of increase will start slowing again, because the rapid increase earlier last century was due to people having four or five kids, now it's fewer than 3. I'm somewhat in support of limited child policies. In the modern world I see it as socially irresponsible to squeeze out loads of kids, for the above reasons of resources and overpopulation.

- On resources, it's going to be a struggle, for some countries more than others. The hardest hit will inevitably be the poorest countries and things like famine and disease are going to get worse before they get better as a result.

On another level, people are increasingly moving towards large population centres and we're going to see an increase in "mega cities" with populations of 20 million or more. This is actually a good thing (not for traffic of course, but in general) because people are more likely to live close to where they work, resources and produce travel a shorter distance and more can make use of public rather than personal transport. Tokyo is a good example of a mega city at work.

- I think GM crops will become wider used and there won't be as much of the social stigma about them as there is today - they're a means to an end and people will come to realise that.

- On food in general, our current livestock breeding is apparently unsustainable in terms of space and energy use, which will begin to cause problems. One possible solution - and one that some people may like more than others - is that we're currently not making best use of a species that is utterly abundant on our planet and incredibly easy to breed in vast numbers - insects. 50, 100 years into the future there's a very real possibility that unless better options are found, the most sustainable meat product on supermarket shelves will be something that buzzes or crawls. Yum.
 
It´s an interesting subject :)
I think feeding a whole world that´s twice the size of this population will create far more problems then fresh water.

Fresh water we have stocked like in a fridge, food we don´t.
 
I actually don't think there will be any major problems. We have the ability to produce an amazing amount of food from very little land... and there's still a TON of room to grow. Water shouldn't be a problem either, as methods for generating electricity continue to improve (you can make water from electricity). I think the biggest problem is oil, actually, and that has an obvious solution as well.

So... I think we're fine.
 
Make water? I'm not familiar with that process.

I have done some large contract work with r.o. systems for experimental deep brackish wells in southern new mexico though. You'd be surprised how much water is down there, it costs too much to be practical atm.
 
We don´t need to make any more water. We have enough and it will never run out.

What we can´t do is take salt water and efficiently turn it into fresh water.
 
hampus_dh
What we can´t do is take salt water and efficiently turn it into fresh water.
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Depends on what you mean by "efficiently". All we need is gobs of electricity. Nuclear power handles the electricity, desalination handles the freshwater. Electricity is also the solution for oil. Luckily we have nuclear power, and our planet gets baked with power from the sun all day every day.
 
Can they make photo voltaic cells for wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum?
 
Danoff
Depends on what you mean by "efficiently". All we need is gobs of electricity. Nuclear power handles the electricity, desalination handles the freshwater. Electricity is also the solution for oil. Luckily we have nuclear power, and our planet gets baked with power from the sun all day every day.
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I believe he meant not efficiently from an economic perspective, since getting water from deep soil is cheaper than running a dedicated thermal desalination plant. It actually is, but when available in fifty years time, nuclear fusion might do the trick.

On population growth policies, I think that contraceptive methods should receive more fiscal and educational support. Nowadays, most people only plan to have two children at max in developed countries. Reducing the number of surprises is the way to go.

China's approach is needed given the scale of their populace. If such policies weren't adopted back then, millions would have died in hunger and misery and the country wouldn't be galloping through the HDI rates as it is now. It wasn't very democratic, though communism isn't very permissive either. :lol:
 
Omnis
Can they make photo voltaic cells for wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum?
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Technically they already do, since I think current solar cells already generate energy from infra red and ultra violet light wavelengths. Our eyes may be a bit limited but to a solar cell, light is light.
 
Keef
and sends a nasty plague our way.
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Newsflash, we are the nasty plague.

Population is 7 billion globally and China and India account for somewhere in the region of 2-2.5billion of that. Sure, China has the 'one child' rule, but 300million families having one child is worse then 50 million families having 3 children. As the ability of those countries falls below the required level to sustain ever growing populations, migration occurs to lands that can, until they can't either.

Like all plagues and viruses, growth becomes exponential until a point where the supporting system places natural barriers to additional growth, and the virus, by virtue of needing growth to sustain its existence, recedes in size to equilibrium and the process repeats:

"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world".
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- Henry Malthus, 1798 - An essay on the principle of population
 
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There maybe a war in the future(but i hope not) and this will drop any population down by a huge amount since nukes are more powerful than ever, we also have bio-chem weapons.
 
Well, nature generally does whatever it can to maintain a balance. And nature's population control methods are much nastier than human population control methods. So we have a choice: We can keep our pants on and only lose a few people every time there is a natural disaster, or we can have tens of thousands of people dying in tsunamis. At one time the Japanese didn't live by the coast, because they knew what would happen if they did.
 
So what you're saying is we have a hundred years to find a habital planet, figure out how to get there and move people to it?
 
Famine
Look, I was acquitted, okay? Also, it's just the light - my BMI is 25.
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BMI doesn´t say anything though as it doesn´t account for muscle mass.

sniper338
So what you're saying is we have a hundred years to find a habital planet, figure out how to get there and move people to it?
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What we need to do is up the Space-program and get the human race into space to ensure the race keeps on living.

If a meteor big enough is on a collision course with the earth and we can´t gently push it out of our way we are screwed.
We have no place to hide and the only thing that has a minor chance of surviving is bacteria. And then evolution has to start all over again.

Think of it like this, 99% of all the living creatures that have walked this earth is now extinct. Why assume we sit in a safe boat? :)
 
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Wars over food and water will be coming - the world is already grossly overpopulated for natural resources... just like bacteria in a petrie dish multiplying and consuming until all that is left is their own waste to die in...
 
grrlpurple
just like bacteria in a petrie dish multiplying and consuming until all that is left is their own waste to die in...
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Too bad we're not intelligent beings with problem solving capability like bacteria.
 

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