World population passed 7.5 billion yesterday!

[Findthepin1]

According to http://www.worldometers.info

We are now at 7 500 256 700 people on the planet!

It rounds to 8 billion now. 

Edited April 25, 2017 by Findthepin1

[kerbiloid]

0.5 bln t

[OrbitalBuzzsaw]

#colonizemars

[Frybert]

1 hour ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

#colonizemars

No.

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

#colonizemars

I don't see how that would solve anything. Before we would be able to deport a million people, we will be several billions more. 

[The Moose In Your House]

7.5 Billion people already? I thought the population was dropping.

[Steel]

34 minutes ago, The Moose In Your House said:

7.5 Billion people already? I thought the population was dropping.

I don't think the growth rate has even slowed in the past 40 years or so

EDIT: ok it has, but it's still over 1% 

Edited April 25, 2017 by Steel

[mikegarrison]

Who was it, exactly? Did the parents win a special prize?

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, The Moose In Your House said:

7.5 Billion people already? I thought the population was dropping.

In developed countries, natural population growth (birth rate minus death rate) is dropping, while immigration keeps the population growing. In developing countries, outside help is bringing the death rate down, while the birth rate is still at their traditional high levels (make a bunch of babies hoping a few survive, but now medicine is helping more of them survive).

Japan is on the down side of the demographic curve with their strict immigration policies. They've had to convert schools to senior centers.

[ARS]

Either we find a way to colonize planets or making orbital colonies, or we're going to have an overcrowded world

[Frybert]

7 minutes ago, ARS said:

Either we find a way to colonize planets or making orbital colonies, or we're going to have an overcrowded world

So you take out....maybe a few thousand from this planet....then you end up overcrowded on two planets.

[ARS]

Just now, Frybert said:

So you take out....maybe a few thousand from this planet....then you end up overcrowded on two planets.

And so the cycle shall repeat again... forever

[Frybert]

Just now, ARS said:

And so the cycle shall repeat again... forever

And humanity cements its place in history as a plague across the universe.

[ARS]

As quoted by Havelock Ellis: "The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands."

[The Raging Sandwich]

"The world is becoming overpopulated, we'll have no room on this planet in 500 years!"

[RedKraken]

Some light reading : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

It will be interesting to see how the curves compare over the next 20-30 years.

It wont be the fun kind of interesting.

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

Either we find a way to colonize planets or making orbital colonies, or we're going to have an overcrowded world

That'd be quite hard to do. There's a lot we can do on this planet. "Terraform" Siberia, the Sahara, the Gobi Desert, and Canada. That's a lot of unused area right there, and the tech isn't as far ahead. I say that in quotes because you'd likely need to paraterraform those areas. Then there's arcologies. Of course we could become a domed city planet. Heck, we could try and build floating islands. Not now, sure, but these would be far easier and cheaper to do than planets and orbital colonies. We could probably support tens of billions given more advanced future technology. Perhaps quite comfortably. 

[DoctorDavinci]

15 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

That'd be quite hard to do. There's a lot we can do on this planet. "Terraform" Siberia, the Sahara, the Gobi Desert, and Canada. That's a lot of unused area right there, and the tech isn't as far ahead. I say that in quotes because you'd likely need to paraterraform those areas. Then there's arcologies. Of course we could become a domed city planet. Heck, we could try and build floating islands. Not now, sure, but these would be far easier and cheaper to do than planets and orbital colonies. We could probably support tens of billions given more advanced future technology. Perhaps quite comfortably. 

Not sure but I'm fairly confident in my assumption that Canada is habitable and wouldn't require 'paraterraforming' as you call it

Plus methinks that someone would be hard pressed to appropriate Canadian lands in order to try and prevent overpopulation ... if you need to do this you are already overpopulated

On that note, the last time someone came to 'appropriate' Canada we roasted marshmallows over some white house that was on fire ... actually, IIRC, we did that twice 

As for how many people the planet can support ... well that is a big question and people who are smarter than me figured out that to maintain a stable ecosystem planetwide it would require the human population on earth to drop by 70% or more. The reason for this is not that apparent, however it can be summed up by simply thinking about all the other life on the planet that we eat

How many cows, sheep, goats and chickens are needed to sustain the worlds population ... did you know that cow farts are a substantial contributor to global warming (methane is a greenhouse gas)

The planet Earth is a living organism with which we humans (as well as all 'life') share a symbiotic existence with ... the problems we face with the planet warming, the great barrier reef being declared 'dead', holes in the ozone layer of our atmosphere, severe weather, earthquakes (caused by fraking), acidification of the oceans, air pollution, antibiotic resistant viruses/germs, the accelerated extinction of various living organisms, massive starvation in parts of the world, aquifers drying up, massive toxic algae blooms in the pacific ocean and many more 'planetary' issues are directly or indirectly caused by human overpopulation and greed

@Frybert summed it up nicely:

2 hours ago, Frybert said:

And humanity cements its place in history as a plague across the universe.

 

[IllyrianTheGreat]

6 hours ago, The Moose In Your House said:

7.5 Billion people already? I thought the population was dropping.

It is dropping in Europe and Russia, other parts of the World are increasing rate of births. China quits from "one child" and now gives money for people to have two or more children.

[Bill Phil]

43 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Not sure but I'm fairly confident in my assumption that Canada is habitable and wouldn't require 'paraterraforming' as you call it

Plus methinks that someone would be hard pressed to appropriate Canadian lands in order to try and prevent overpopulation ... if you need to do this you are already overpopulated

On that note, the last time someone came to 'appropriate' Canada we roasted marshmallows over some white house that was on fire ... actually, IIRC, we did that twice 

As for how many people the planet can support ... well that is a big question and people who are smarter than me figured out that to maintain a stable ecosystem planetwide it would require the human population on earth to drop by 70% or more. The reason for this is not that apparent, however it can be summed up by simply thinking about all the other life on the planet that we eat

How many cows, sheep, goats and chickens are needed to sustain the worlds population ... did you know that cow farts are a substantial contributor to global warming (methane is a greenhouse gas)

The planet Earth is a living organism with which we humans (as well as all 'life') share a symbiotic existence with ... the problems we face with the planet warming, the great barrier reef being declared 'dead', holes in the ozone layer of our atmosphere, severe weather, earthquakes (caused by fraking), acidification of the oceans, air pollution, antibiotic resistant viruses/germs, the accelerated extinction of various living organisms, massive starvation in parts of the world, aquifers drying up, massive toxic algae blooms in the pacific ocean and many more 'planetary' issues are directly or indirectly caused by human overpopulation and greed

@Frybert summed it up nicely:

 

Most of Canada is too cold for people to want to live there. Yukon's population is 37k, for example. And it's pretty big.

I'm not suggesting we appropriate Canada's land. Canadians themselves may choose to do it. And it's not necessarily a sign of overpopulation if you're looking to carve out better land from not so great land. I do think that other options will be pursued first, though.

We're not talking about 200 years ago...

We dedicate more area to meat than to crops, as a species. This can be virtually eliminated with one technology that we already have: synthetic meat. It's not on a large scale yet, but it's very possible that it could be the norm within a century, freeing up vast stretches of land for human use. And reducing the required population of farm animals.

Technology has, in the past, dramatically increased the agricultural yield of various crops.

Of course, this requires bending the Earth to our wishes. But that's old hat by now. We just need to do it on a bigger scale. But we have a lot of time, provided we're smart about it.

 All of those problems can be solved by human ingenuity. We don't need to leave. And by all rights we shouldn't until we can figure out a good way to live on this planet. 

We already change large plots of land to become totally alien to the natural world. This is what we do. Heck, the earth would change over time anyways. We're jut changing it to get a good benefit.

Earth is a living planet. But we can change its shape to better suit us. It's our "hat", in a trope way. We've done it for a long time, and will continue to do it.

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, Frybert said:

10 hours ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

#colonizemars

No

Agreed. A pyramide will be not high enough. The Mars too far.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

 "Terraform" Siberia,

Siberian and Canadian cold bogs are the Earth lungs which bury the atmospheric carbon as turf, then coal.
(That's because dead plants don't get eaten or rot, but just sink, rather than in jungle)
There are just a few ideas worse than this.

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Then there's arcologies.

+1. Which can gather billions in a small place, dramatically reduce logistical losses, dramatically help with resource recycling, allowing the whole other planet to get green.

1 hour ago, DoctorDavinci said:

How many cows, sheep, goats and chickens are needed to sustain the worlds population

None of them if grow GMO algae in underground vats under the arcologies.

Also any arcology is a ready-to-use space colony, just on the Earth.

Edited April 26, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Streetwind]

6 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

In developing countries, outside help is bringing the death rate down, while the birth rate is still at their traditional high levels (make a bunch of babies hoping a few survive, but now medicine is helping more of them survive).

Not true anymore!

Birth rates are coming down in all countries across the world. Globally, the number of babies born per year is starting to decrease as well. World population is naturally approaching a fixed maximum.

Hans Rosling has many interesting statistics about global development, but this one here seems extra relevant:

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Streetwind

[WinkAllKerb'']

*grumpf* ...}§{... "search?q=i+swim+in+the+primitive+soup+and+i+m+happy+again"

well .. it's complicated ... go go internet go ... the last 300 400 years world demography and tech and edu &&& ... 'sigh'

next step might be to lower the overall biped population // tech progress over the next thousand years , keeping enough crossing without to much individual // others being and "transport" ...

Edited April 26, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[IllyrianTheGreat]

5 hours ago, RedKraken said:

Some light reading : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

It will be interesting to see how the curves compare over the next 20-30 years.

It wont be the fun kind of interesting.

Club of Rome is group of really bad people, there is no natural limit.

[RedKraken]

44 minutes ago, IllyrianTheGreat said:

Club of Rome is group of really bad people, there is no natural limit.

(searching)...ahh bilderberg group.

Thanks for the heads up.