Will the Human Race last another Century?

[Pyrrhic]

I'm a big fan of Dan Brown's books and his newest release, Inferno, referencing Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, has brought up the topic of human overpopulation.

 

One character, Bertrand Zobrist, states that without a major plague in the coming years the human race will collapse in the next 100 years. Apparently if the human race's existence in earth was condensed to one hour we would literally be in the final seconds. Will, as Zobrist said, the current generation's offspring see the collapse of society as we know it?

 

When you think about it, it doesn't seem such an unbelievable statement. It took thousands and thousands of years for the population of humans on earth to reach one billion, yet only took a couple centuries to then reach seven billion, are we unknowingly staring face to face with a major crisis here?

 

 

 

I haven't finished Inferno, so please, no spoilers.

Edited June 24, 2013 by lzw3

[The Pizza Delivery Guy]

I'm honestly surprised no one was blown away in the 60's. Besides JFK.

[Wolvington]

Yeah the increase is exponential, but given the intelligence of the Human race maybe we'll manage to find another place for our existence. Somewhere I read this is going to happen just like the Big Bang, followed by Big Crunch. Don't worry, the population will reach to its peak somewhere around 2200 and then fall gradually.

[sivispacem]

Population growth is slowing rapidly. We aren't far from reaching population stability- estimates are between 8 and and 12 billion people. In terms of resources and physical space, that's perfectly serviceable. A world of 12 billion won't be overpopulated as long as some efforts are made to disperse people in a reasonable way.

[Pyrrhic]

@PDG

What do you mean by blown away. I know exactly what you mean with JFK (although he lives in Scotland with JaniS Joplin) but regarding modern society? In waht context?

 

@Wolvington

An apocalyptic event is the least of my worries, more of a priority will be the lack of resources. We are running out of oil as it is, how are we going to solve this issue when there are potentially twice as many people as there is currently?

 

@sivispacem

But will there ever be a stable population? Who is to say that we won't just keep having children? How is resources, or rather a lack of such, going to be handled when we have that many people on the planet? There are numerous substances we are already short on. When you add on the time and usage and population is seems we are going to be ultimately doomed.

Edited June 24, 2013 by lzw3

[The Pizza Delivery Guy]

@PDG

What do you mean by blown away. I know exactly what you mean with JFK (although he lives in Scotland with JaniS Joplin) but regarding modern society? In what context?

Like by the atomic bombs. There was way too much tension between the U.S. and Russia, and obviously ties are still existing between different countries to this day, we'd have entered WW3 if it hadn't been for foreign policy.

 

Sure hope everyone around the world is at least smart enough to not wage nuclear war. Repercussions are quite clear with simple missile testing. The world would truly end, if not by ALIENS!!!, by way of war if that should ever happen. We always say we'd love to see the fallout of nuclear war, with mutants, zombies, and all that good stuff, but I know if I really was in a zombie situation, I'd hide under my bed.

[Pyrrhic]

I think Nuclear fallout isn't dependent on population really. The only link between the two I can really think of is that countries could possibly seek power, thus leading to war.

[sivispacem]

 

But will there ever be a stable population?

Not for definite, but most likely. All creatures have stable population levels, and most scientists think that the world's population will either stabilise or drop very soon. One, two. Pretty picture:

 

 

Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Studies at the University of Sheffield, recently published a book called Population Ten Billion, with extensive statistical analysis of population trends. His estimation is a stable population around the ten billion mark, which in terms of resources is perfectly manageable.

 

 

There are numerous substances we are already short on. When you add on the time and usage and population is seems we are going to be ultimately doomed.

This is a bit of a myth. There are very few resources we're already short on. Contrary to those adverts you see on television, there is enough worldwide food production to comfortably feed the current population. Similarly, there's enough primary fuel sources- oil include, but natural gas, coat, biomass, scope for renewable and nuclear power- to supply a population massively larger than the current 7 billion. Similarly, even things like rare-earth metals on which modern living depends have a high enough level of abundance in the earth's crust, and with a growing population can be exploited at an increasing rate. We may have passed peak oil production, for instance, but in reality we probably haven't. The issue has always been dispersal- that's what we need to resolve to make a population of ten billion workable. If we can satisfactorily disperse both supply of and production of requisite materials, then we will do fine- but that's the real challenge.

[lil weasel]

I expect that Mother Nature (whatever) will sort it all out. Ω

Man's constant interference with nature's methods of cleansing will have to stop somewhere. And, then a 'catastrophic' event will purge the earth of 80% ± the human population.

 

[JOSEPH X]

The population is declining in most western countries, and has to be bolstered by immigration otherwise pensions won't be paid off for the aging populations of those countries. As more and more countries become modern industrial societies, with high numbers of educated women, the problem is going to be declining numbers of people and aging populations. Retirement age may have to rise to 80 to cope with this.

 

The bigger problem is the amount of resorces all those rich industrialised countries consume, and the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere that it takes to make those consumables and transport them around the globe - not to mention domestic consumption.

 

I feel sorry for you young ones because you are going to live through a time when the worlds major cities are uninhabitable due to sea level rise. Hell, I might even witness it myself. Even the most ardent supporters of climate change are in a state of denial when it comes to the speed of sea level rise. They are erring on the side of caution far too much, because of the shrill rhetoric of the climate change deniers.

[The Armageddon(Temp)]

This is an interesting topic, dude. So in a nutshell , we are discussing ways to battle over population, right ?

 

Death penalty for parking violations ! Population increment will get converted to population decrement

 

Lol, just kidding.

I have read somewhere that over all population that the present landmass can bear is almost 10 billion.

IMO as and when time will come, the upcoming calamity will itself trigger the need to either control population or find new lands to support it. But, I guess that time mankind will be even more evolved. They might just find ways on their own to battle this. I guess underwater towns , aerial cities , cities on other planets etc. will be the only ways to confront it. But that time science also might have been researched enough to provide a definite background for these 'currently' impossible projects.

Also that would be the time, where nature might play its part and stabilize the population once again. You can never know.

[Pyrrhic]

@sivispacem

That's a relief, however although the rate of children born unto a mother is slowly dropping, the rate of mothers is increasing. Would I be correct in saying that it's just a matter of which outweighs the other?

And I am glad to hear those lobbyists on lack of such resources are quite incorrect. I honestly don't have any idea about this topic, I purely posted this thread as a thought and a place to gather information on the topic, thanks sivis.

 

Weasel is on his home made drugs again it seems. Is it the red pill today or are in more of an injection-y mood today? Your "mother nature" isn't going to sort anything out. If you do believe he/she is going to do so you're going to be very disappointed when you are reincarnated and are here to see the end.

[JOSEPH X]

This is a great lecture on the next 100 years

 

 

[Finn 7 five 11]

Like Sivis mentioned population is starting to flatten out, it's mostly third world countries that are the problem with increasing growth For example Australia has had less births per woman since 1976. I don't think the human race will get wiped out in any case, like lil weasel said, nature will cut us down if we get too high a population, and some of the things we have done are hurting us, fertility in men has dropped quite a bit recently, obesity, smoking, probably widespread use of pesticides and other harmful chemicals are affecting it as well.

 

But yeah if we ever do get too high, I think people will just starve and get sick or whatever and it'll drop back down. I don't see the whole population getting wiped out anytime soon, unless a nuke war breaks out or an asteroid hits.

[Pyrrhic]

Speaking of which, why is it third world countries have such a high fertility rate as opposed to first world countries? It's not as if (assumingly) they have the ability to get a "baby bonus" or such a policy that exists in some countries.

[lil weasel]

How many 'third world' countries have their Government shoving chemicals down their throats?

Although the 'WHO' is doing it's best to bring them 'up to speed' (Pun intended.)

[Brad]

Speaking of which, why is it third world countries have such a high fertility rate as opposed to first world countries? It's not as if (assumingly) they have the ability to get a "baby bonus" or such a policy that exists in some countries.

In Third World Countries, there are a myriad of factors that invoke population growth which preclude living in Western society. Predominately, it is survival in both sociological conditional grounds and genetic grounds. One phenomenon is in times of war that directly affect the individual. In third world countries, a lack of an efficient security apparatus, social institutions and dysfunctional state lead to in-house territorial disputes and tribalistic competition and war. As such, because of the uncertainty of security conditions, the population will reproduce more to ensure survival. This can be cross-referenced in the population booms witnessed in Post-World War II. Another factor is religion, many divine disciplines in Third World Countries have an adversarial relationship towards contraception which inevitably leads to greater families units. Thirdly, the family units themselves wish to carry on their genetic lineage with "insurance". The greater a family entity produce children, the likelihood of the family surviving increases in being able to produce more workers to provide for the family unit. The more workers means a greater chance at harbouring resources for nutrition and living and because of the difficult conditions these families find themselves in, "insurance" is a permanent condition of Third World family planning.

[Andreas]

It's known that the human population will definitely grow to 8 billion, it's inevitable. There are three scenarios of when the population is going to be stable, two of them are extreme cases and it's not very likely that either of them will happen, and the third one is most likely going to happen. The first extreme scenario would be that the population grows to 8 billion people, then starts to decline until it levels off at around 6 billion people. It requires that we do not find any solution for problems like hunger, AIDS, et cetera. And that's not very likely. The other extreme scenario would be that we find a solution for all those problems, which would result in the human population growing to level off at 20 billion people, which does not seem likely, either. The third scenario would be that we find a solution for one or the other problem, but not all of them obviously, and the population is stable at around 10 billion people, as sivispacem already pointed out.

 

I think the human race will last for another century, if nothing like a nuclear war will happen, but we won't last forever, that's for sure.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Carl CJ Johnsons Brother Brian

[Vercetti42]

Yes.

 

While the population rises, technology and resources also rises, so we can still keep up with it, however at one point it may get out of hand, for instance, in India, villages get converted into towns and towns to cities to control the population but that in turn will decrease the agricultural growth and risk the occurrence of a famine. However I'm confident that the Human Race will survive another century but it won't for ever.

 

The Sun is like a candle, burning out with every passing year, in a few billion years it will burn out completely, it is also a star so therefore it'll die but by which (hopefully) there are some kinds of technology to tackle the crisis.

 

If North Korea does nuke the US(does not seem likely) then it might signal the early end of the Human Race.

[Pyrrhic]

Converting towns to cities and nuclear war is the least of my worry, as I said, the thread is mainly concerning overpopulation, something nuclear fallout doesn't really have a link to.

 

I have no doubt that the human race will be either extinct or on other planets by the time the sun wipes out this planet, so again, this seems quite redundant.