The Golden Age of Mankind

[Jor-el]

China, India, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, S. Korea, Japan, Europe, Brazil, Iran, Egypt.

The only really populated country with runaway population is Nigeria.

Let me put it to you a lot more clearly...

Out of the worlds 210 or 230 nations, depending on the list, only 20 to 40 nations are at this time holding the same population or declining...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate

Those few nations do not have 1% of the worlds population. We are not talking of runaway populations increases, we are talking of systemic population increase throughout the world, that if not stopped will cause the eventual extinction of mankind.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Jor-el

[Frank Merton]

I did not, repeat, did not, say that the world's population is stable. I said it is approaching stability. The UN estimates now are population will stabilize in about 50 years, but with growth steadily declining until then. It would stabilize a lot sooner if it weren't for Africa.

One other thing -- even if this were not true, a Malthusian crisis would not cause extinction of humanity, but only a sharp drop in numbers and a lot of suffering.

[Jor-el]

I did not, repeat, did not, say that the world's population is stable. I said it is approaching stability. The UN estimates now are population will stabilize in about 50 years, but with growth steadily declining until then. It would stabilize a lot sooner if it weren't for Africa.

One other thing -- even if this were not true, a Malthusian crisis would not cause extinction of humanity, but only a sharp drop in numbers and a lot of suffering.

Could you provide a link that supports that statement?

The intensity of the population decline would also depend on the intensity of the populations use of local resources, among other things.

[Frank Merton]

Do your own research. I am not in the business, so if you don't believe me check it out.

[Grandpa Greenman]

Surprise, Jor'el, I agree, we must have a link, Frank. Link or I must have some Viet coffee.

[Jor-el]

Do your own research. I am not in the business, so if you don't believe me check it out.

Let me put it to you this way. There is not a single place that says this... much less a UN estimate stating what you said.

Surprise, Jor'el, I agree, we must have a link, Frank. Link or I must have some Viet coffee.

Well there is a always a 1st for everything...

[Grandpa Greenman]

Do your own research. I am not in the business, so if you don't believe me check it out.

The game has rules, you made the statement you must back it up. In the end it all a Game of Thrones after all. (Best show TV has come up with in a looooong while.) I get it from a site in Massacrer I think. Wow, welcome to the gold age of man, the internet.

[Frank Merton]

I am not in the job of correcting people's misinformation, but here -- this took me all of two minutes. Don't you know how to use a search engine?

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm

[Frank Merton]

Where is this rule? My opinion is if you think someone is wrong regarding a factual statement, you have the burden.

[Jor-el]

I am not in the job of correcting people's misinformation, but here -- this took me all of two minutes. Don't you know how to use a search engine?

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm

May 3, 2011

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.

The new report comes just ahead of a demographic milestone, with the world population expected to pass 7 billion in late October, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion. Demographers called the new projections a reminder that a problem that helped define global politics in the 20th century, the population explosion, is far from solved in the 21st.

“Every billion more people makes life more difficult for everybody — it’s as simple as that,” said John Bongaarts, a demographer at the Population Council, a research group in New York. “Is it the end of the world? No. Can we feed 10 billion people? Probably. But we obviously would be better off with a smaller population.”

The projections were made by the United Nations population division, which has a track record of fairly accurate forecasts. In the new report, the division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating that the world would most likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.

Among the factors behind the upward revisions is that fertility is not declining as rapidly as expected in some poor countries, and has shown a slight increase in many wealthier countries, including the United States, Britain and Denmark.

The director of the United Nations population division, Hania Zlotnik, said the world’s fastest-growing countries, and the wealthy Western nations that help finance their development, face a choice about whether to renew their emphasis on programs that encourage family planning.

Though they were a major focus of development policy in the 1970s and 1980s, such programs have stagnated in many countries, caught up in ideological battles over abortion, sex education and the role of women in society. Conservatives have attacked such programs as government meddling in private decisions, and in some countries, Catholic groups fought widespread availability of birth control. And some feminists called for less focus on population control and more on empowering women.

Over the past decade, foreign aid to pay for contraceptives — $238 million in 2009 — has barely budged, according to United Nations estimates. The United States has long been the biggest donor, but the budget compromise in Congress last month cut international family planning programs by 5 percent.

“The need has grown, but the availability of family planning services has not,” said Rachel Nugent, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington, a research group.

Dr. Zlotnik said in an interview that the revised numbers were based on new forecasting methods and the latest demographic trends. But she cautioned that any forecast looking 90 years into the future comes with many caveats.

That is particularly so for some fast-growing countries whose populations are projected to skyrocket over the next century. For instance, Yemen, a country whose population has quintupled since 1950, to 25 million, would see its numbers quadruple again, to 100 million, by century’s end, if the projections prove accurate. Yemen already depends on food imports and faces critical water shortages.

In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, the report projects that population will rise from today’s 162 million to 730 million by 2100. Malawi, a country of 15 million today, could grow to 129 million, the report projected.

The implicit, and possibly questionable, assumption behind these numbers is that food and water will be available for the billions yet unborn, and that potential catastrophes including climate change, wars or epidemics will not serve as a brake on population growth. “It is quite possible for several of these countries that are smallish and have fewer resources, these numbers are just not sustainable,” Dr. Zlotnik said.

Well-designed programs can bring down growth rates even in the poorest countries. Provided with information and voluntary access to birth-control methods, women have chosen to have fewer children in societies as diverse as Bangladesh, Iran, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

One message from the new report is that the AIDS epidemic, devastating as it has been, has not been the demographic disaster that was once predicted. Prevalence estimates and projections for the human immunodeficiency virus made for Africa in the 1990s turned out to be too high, and in many populations, treatment with new drug regimens has cut the death rate from the disease.

But the survival of millions of people with AIDS who would have died without treatment, and falling rates of infant and child mortality — both heartening trends — also mean that fertility rates for women need to fall faster to curb population growth, demographers said.

Other factors have slowed change in Africa, experts said, including women’s lack of power in their relationships with men, traditions like early marriage and polygamy, and a dearth of political leadership. While about three-quarters of married American women use a modern contraceptive, the comparable proportions are a quarter of women in East Africa, one in 10 in West Africa, and a mere 7 percent in Central Africa, according to United Nations statistics.

“West and Central Africa are the two big regions of the world where the fertility transition is happening, but at a snail’s pace,” said John F. May, a World Bank demographer.

Some studies suggest that providing easy, affordable access to contraceptives is not always sufficient. A trial by Harvard researchers in Lusaka, Zambia, found that only when women had greater autonomy to decide whether to use contraceptives did they have significantly fewer children. Other studies have found that general education for girls plays a critical role, in that literate young women are more likely to understand that family size is a choice.

The new report suggests that China, which has for decades enforced restrictive population policies, could soon enter the ranks of countries with declining populations, peaking at 1.4 billion in the next couple of decades, then falling to 941 million by 2100.

The United States is growing faster than many rich countries, largely because of high immigration and higher fertility among Hispanic immigrants. The new report projects that the United States population will rise from today’s 311 million to 478 million by 2100.

http://www.nytimes.c...ation.html?_r=0

This is why I stated that you are in error.... and that the UN never said any such thing.

Before I write, I research. And I'll take bets that in a few years they will be forced to reconsider this research for higher numbers than they were yet again expecting...

Edited June 22, 2013 by Jor-el

[Frank Merton]

That's exactly what the UN said -- population is expected to stabilize on a world-wide basis in about 50 years. By the way, this prediction has been trending downward.

[Jor-el]

That's exactly what the UN said -- population is expected to stabilize on a world-wide basis in about 50 years. By the way, this prediction has been trending downward.

Again, that is not what the article states. The projection of 10 Billion is for the year 2100, that's not 50 years. and it will continue to increase as they revise their estimates as they have done a number of times.

[Frank Merton]

I might add something not exactly pertinent but still illuminating. The Chinese today are faced with a garguantian demographic problem -- the population is aging very fast, and very soon the elderly will outnumber the productive young. Japan is already in this state, but they can afford it better as they have greater wealth.

There is a fine line between stopping population growth right away and facing this sort of development (which would mean the bankruptcy of social security in the States) and having the rate of growth taper off more slowly, as countries like India and Vietnam are trying to do.

It means more people in the end, but also a more productive balance between young and old.

You are looking only at the top estimates, not the most likely estimates. Even then I wonder, can you read?

[Grandpa Greenman]

Where is this rule? My opinion is if you think someone is wrong regarding a factual statement, you have the burden.

It is the unwritten rule of the internet. Contact Bill Gates for the book unwritten of rules.

Thank you, my friend.

What I got from those graphs:

I think giving women access to birth control populations will regulate themselves. Nobody wants to have more kids than you can feed. You could buy a house on the beach twice over for what it cost to feed and care for one kid. House on the beach or kid... think hard...

[Jor-el]

I might add something not exactly pertinent but still illuminating. The Chinese today are faced with a garguantian demographic problem -- the population is aging very fast, and very soon the elderly will outnumber the productive young. Japan is already in this state, but they can afford it better as they have greater wealth.

There is a fine line between stopping population growth right away and facing this sort of development (which would mean the bankruptcy of social security in the States) and having the rate of growth taper off more slowly, as countries like India and Vietnam are trying to do.

It means more people in the end, but also a more productive balance between young and old.

You are looking only at the top estimates, not the most likely estimates. Even then I wonder, can you read?

Yes I can read....

Who is being liberal in their estimates?

[Frank Merton]

Very selective of you. After 2050??

Look, I feel you think I'm stupid to fall for that sort of trick. What your chart shows is declining growth, like I said. It stabilized by 2075, (or in about 50 years).

[Jor-el]

Very selective of you. After 2050??

Look, I feel you think I'm stupid to fall for that sort of trick. What your chart shows is declining growth, like I said. It stabilized by 2075, (or in about 50 years).

Oh do you actually see the downward trend on any of those graphs?

[Frank Merton]

I give up

[Jor-el]

I give up

Oh don't it just starting to get interesting...

[Black Red Devil]

I agree. This was/is what the League of Nations and U.N. are for. But these will never work with such divided interests. How 'bout a one world government?

- cue the conspiracy theories

I believe we are headed for a one world Govt or rather a New World Order but it won't be controlled by a Bilderberg-like enterprise, run by an elite human population formed by Annunaki descedants controlled by aliens from Zeta Reticuli.

It would be more like a democratic Govt on a world wide scale, all cooperating as a League of Nations. Similar to the EU.

[Frank Merton]

A single world government will probably evolve, if for no other reason than to regulate world enterprise and international banks and corporations. Other world problems like global pollution and drug trafficking and the spread of nuclear weapons and pandemics all seem to call for such an approach.

Its development seems to be happening through the development of systems of international treaties, and may remain loose and flexible that way.

Personally I would like to see the existing larger nations broken up into smaller pieces, perhaps city-states emulating Singapore and Hong Kong. These seem, when left alone, to have the best governments.

[Frank Merton]

Oh don't it just starting to get interesting...

No, it started to get tiresome. It was at the point where you were asserting things that just were not in the data, and ignoring reality.

[Grandpa Greenman]

A single world government will probably evolve, if for no other reason than to regulate world enterprise and international banks and corporations. Other world problems like global pollution and drug trafficking and the spread of nuclear weapons and pandemics all seem to call for such an approach.

Its development seems to be happening through the development of systems of international treaties, and may remain loose and flexible that way.

Personally I would like to see the existing larger nations broken up into smaller pieces, perhaps city-states emulating Singapore and Hong Kong. These seem, when left alone, to have the best governments.

I have to concur with this. As long as we are talking about self government while maintaining the rights of all to live a happy full filling life. The UN has a great bill of rights, now it we could get governments to implement and support it.

[SHaYap]

longing ... what is it that we long for ?

`

[Jor-el]

No, it started to get tiresome. It was at the point where you were asserting things that just were not in the data, and ignoring reality.

The reality will be when we actually get there and assert that the "projections" were within the limits of tolerance or whether they missed by a mile...