/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3914896]

http://news.yahoo.com/challenges-loom-world-population-hits-7-billion-040835519.html

So /sci/, what's your take on the current population for the planet? What do you think will be Earth's maximum capacity for humans? 10 Billion? 50 Billion? 1000 Trillion? Is there some truth to the fact that the rapture might be real given that there are so many people here now and maybe the end is quite near?

[Anonymous No.3914899]

>Rapture

Sage and reported

[Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. No.3914905]

200 billion, Magnasanti-style.

[Anonymous No.3914907]

Revelations was about Nero. Stop taking old stories seriously, the people who wrote them didnt.

And "max capacity" depends on many things, such as the nutritional habits of said people.

[Anonymous No.3914915]

current projections indicate that the rate of population growth, given current trends, will decline so much that by 2080 there will be 9.5 or 10 billion people on Earth, and the average population growth will be 0 at that instant (the number of people born will only be enough to replace those who die).
tl;dr, fertility rate in the nations with the greatest population growth is currently plummeting and will halve by about 2030 (which means the regions which tend to have the highest fertility rate in Eurasia will be under 1 child per female in difference between them and regions which have lowest fertility rate within the next ~50 years).

[Anonymous No.3914918]

Current thought is at 10 Billion max. After that, and things get dicey. Good thing is that the population growth is occuring in places like Africa and Asia. They'll likely experience some mass starvation, war, etc. All America and Europe needs to do is seal off the borders when the shit hits the fan in these regions.

[Anonymous No.3914928]

>>3914918
Asia will be about to undergo its revolutions and ww1 and 2 within the next century.
And Europe will be too broke and malaise'd to stop it from happening.
But afterwards I'm pretty sure Islam will be dead in the water and those who remain after the apocalyptic conflicts will organize into one world government.

[Anonymous No.3914933]

Currently world population is only possible and sustainable with the vast amounts of cheap energy provided by non renewable energy sources such as oil.
When the supply of these fuels starts to diminish and extraction slows, as is happening now, food and energy prices spike, leading to financial crisis's and a further drop in the amount of extraction and exploration and investment in alternatives, which in decreases the energy flow, and so on, in a cycle. The increasing effects of total ecosystem collapse will also begin to bite. This in turn will cause at first a gradual slowing of population growth, then a plateau, then a slow decline, followed by a fast drop as modern civilisation overshoots it's ability to sustain itself and mass starvation occurs. Hopefully the last part is still a very long way off, maybe around mid to late this century.
In my view it is highly unlikely that a world population of even half our current number is sustainable in the long term, and by the end of this century it is likely to have dropped to 3 billion or below.

[Anonymous No.3914950]

The world is already way over the sustainable population (pic related).

Fun fact: The world population was only 1 billion in 1950. We've added nearly 6 billion people in the last 60 years. We're actually already feeling the effects of overpopulation although right now its mostly just limited to Africa and Southeast Asia.

[Anonymous No.3914964]

>>3914950

This is such bullshit. There are UNKNOWN reserves of all these substances that we haven't found yet. You sound like one of those people in the 70s saying oil would only last another 30 years. Guess what, dipshit; we found some more.

[Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. No.3914975]

>>3914950

[Anonymous No.3914976]

>>3914964
So it happened in the past, therefore it follows that it must happen again in the future?

How very scientific of you.

[Anonymous No.3914980]

>>3914976
>implying we're running out of antimony

[Anonymous No.3914993]

the question really comes down to quality of life
do you want everyone to be living in a large house in the suburbs with a backyard etc? 1 billion people is to many
or do you want everyone in storage container apartments covering the whole globe? if thats the case the skys the limit >.>

[Anonymous No.3914994]

>>3914950
>Fun fact: The world population was only 1 billion in 1950

>The world population was only 1 billion in 1950
>Fact
Pick one.
The world population reached 1 bill in 1804, and was nearly 3 bill in 1950.

Also, agricultural output almost tripled in the period 1950-now.

[Anonymous No.3915000]

>>3914905
>Magnasanti

Mind = blown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU

[Anonymous No.3915005]

>>3914993
this. do less of us live well, or many of us live poorly?

people who want to breed say the latter.

[Anonymous No.3915007]

The capacity is about 10billion, assuming we find more sustainable sources of energy over the next 50 years. It could be higher if humans decide to colonize the oceans.