Dr. Ray of FSU says that there will be close to a trillion people on earth in 100 years.
In 100 years there will be 100 times as may people living on the earth.
This is slightly more aggressive than the UN estimate of 11 billion, but what’s two orders of magnitude error for an academic? That seems to be the norm.
I think that for a lot of reasons it is more likely that there will be less than a billion people in 100 years.
I agree. Some time this century, phosphate rock will be mined out, at which point agriculture will only work on naturally fertile soils, and we’ve been paving those over PDQ. Earth was able to support about 2 billion people before the green revolution, so something south of that, most likely.
When phosphate rock runs out, we’ll just start using something else.
“we’ll just start using something else.”
There is no “we”. What are you going to use? Rather a lot of fertilizer is made from petroleum, but that too will be exhausted.
The usual “OH MY GOODNESS stuff is running out crap” that we have been hearing for centuries.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
Where the heck do they think ‘stuff’ goes?
There Is No Shortage of Stuff: Functionally Unlimited Resources Exist
For phosphate we can always mine river deltas.
Abundance and Chemical Speciation of Phosphorus in Sediments of the Mackenzie River Delta, the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea: Importance of Detrital Apatite
http://media1.shmoop.com/images/biology/biobook_eco_13.png
300 years worth of reserves, and 1400 years worth of resources, according to this :
http://www.thecropsite.com/articles/1621/world-reserves-of-phosphate-rock-dynamic-unfolding-story
No need to hit the panic button quite yet.
Please read these…https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/unlimiting-resources-basalt-for-a-high-tech-stone-age/
“Some time this century, phosphate rock will be mined out”
Bollox.
Stop making stuff up.
Now that is REALLY funny. The article had an extra zero(0). The guy meant 10 billion, not 100 billion. Then you say that it is TWO orders of magnitude off, instead of ONE order of magnitude off. I guess that makes 10 mistakes if you think in binary. 🙂
Read it again
“In 100 years there will be 100 times as may people living on the earth.”
7 billion times 100 = 700 billion.
It’s you that’s REALLY funny, sunshine.
He didn’t say “100 billion”, he said “100 times as many…”.
100 has two zeros, so represents two orders of magnitude.
Try some remedial arithmetic classes.
Plus some elementary reading too, perhaps.
That still does not make sense. He wrote “The population doubles every 40 years”. So even just at 80 years out, it would be four times the current population. I am pretty sure four times the current population is a LOT more than 10 billion. I don’t know what he meant, but either his math or proofreading skills or both are seriously off.
Ray has also been involved in some questionable activities. http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20021103/NEWS/211030740
and http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=20021008&id=Z6EsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=q_0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6791,6540450
This Ray guy’s a real winner isn’t he?
Ah yes, the mother of all doomsday puff, human overpopulation…
Please spend some time on gapminder to discover for yourself, that this isn’t a problem; at least not a real problem. It is a perceived problem. Again, humans at the center, it’s all about us, and somehow it is destroying the planet, all life, etc. It is a religion. It is an utterly irrational, notion based on perverse self-hatred.
There are as many people as there are. It is a given. Too late – whoever is here is here. We need to care for each other best we can.
More people on the way? That’s demographics. And by studying demographics, one finds that as a societies becomes wealthier and less ignorant, families have fewer children; in some cases around the world, this is resulting in collapsing populations with speculation that some cultures will be at risk within the next generation. Like European cultures where new birth replacement rate is actually alarmingly low. There are brakes on population growth.
And all around the world, people are emerging from poverty, all around the world, people are growing out of ignorance. It is a slow process; but it is irreversible, and well underway and it eventually results in lower human population growth.
If terrible things happen, and they might; think ice-age or collapse of civilized society; human population would probably fall much faster than my scenario of eventual enlightenment with a gradual decrease in population.
We shall see. But run-away population growth? Not a chance. Just not happening.
There has been a flowering of humanity for the last couple hundred years from the industrial revolution – a miracle that I am thankful for. But 100x population? Insanely wrong number.
Hans Rosling, unique and entertaining preesenter of statisticsm has a great U-tube session on population. Can’t get link at present but he only has a few of them. Check out why he says population is headed for 10million limit on current trends. basically the more developed countries become, the birth rate falls to ~2 and matches death rate. ie ~ 2. so over next generations, that levels out ~ 10Mill. ver compelling.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth
I think this is the link.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth?language=en
this is it , I think….
He we doing OK, until he advocated green technology as a way to save humanity. Green tech will actually kill off the poorest. If we want to help the poorest, we need to allow them cheap power, power they can afford that will allow them to advance.
I hate TED, it is just fashionable philosophy.
Hey gator! “I hate TED, it is just fashionable philosophy.”
It has certainly gone downhill as the years go past. Still, there are the diamonds mixed in with the dung; it is not ALL fashionable philosophy!
A stopped clock is right twice daily. You may as well attend a UN agenda 21 conference.
If you wonder why College costs are increasing so rapidly, you need look no further than idiots like this.
Who pull down a cool half million in salary….
How many burger flippers salaries (minus the govmint take) does it take to equal one full professors salary?
Maybe he thinks Global Warming causes immortality, thus none of the people alive now will die….