Oops, Scientists May Have Severely Miscalculated How Many Humans Are on Earth

* While most estimates place the current human population at around 8.2 billion, a study suggests we might be vastly underrepresenting rural areas.

* By analyzing 300 rural dam projects across 35 countries, researchers from Aalto University in Finland found discrepancies among these independent population counts and other population data gathered between 1975 and 2010.

* Such underreporting could have consequences in terms of resource allocation within a country, but other experts remain skeptical that decades of population counting could be off by such a wide margin.

Homo sapiens is the most successful mammalian species in Earth history, and it’s not even close. The species thrives on nearly every continent, in a variety of adverse conditions, and outnumbers the second-place contender—the rat—by at least a cool billion. However, a new study suggests that the impressive nature of humanity’s proliferation may have been vastly underreported.

Most estimates place Earth’s human population at around 8.2 billion, but Josias Láng-Ritter—a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University in Finland and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications—claims that these estimates could be underrepresenting rural areas by a significant margin.

“We were surprised to find that the actual population living in rural areas is much higher than the global population data indicates—depending on the dataset, rural populations have been underestimated by between 53 percent to 84 percent over the period studied,” Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. “The results are remarkable, as these datasets have been used in thousands of studies and extensively support decision-making, yet their accuracy has not been systematically evaluated.”

How exactly do you test the accuracy of global datasets used to derive population totals in the first place? Well, with a background in water resource management, Láng-Ritter looked at a different kind of population data gathered from rural dam projects—300 such projects across 35 countries, to be precise. This data focused on the years 1975 to 2010, and these population tallies provided a significant dataset to check against other population totals calculated by organizations like WorldPop, GWP, GRUMP, LandScan, and GHS-POP (which were also analyzed in this study).

“When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated,” Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. “The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected. Unlike global population datasets, such local impact statements provide comprehensive, on-the-ground population counts that are not skewed by administrative boundaries. We then combined these with spatial information from satellite imagery.”

Part of this discrepancy likely stems from the fact that many countries don’t have the resources for precise data collection, and difficulty traveling to far flung rural areas only exacerbates census-counting discrepancies. A widespread underrepresentation of rural populations across the world could have profound impacts on those communities, as censuses are central to figuring out how to divvy up resources.

However, not everyone is convinced by this research. Stuart Gietel-Basten from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology told New Scientist that while increased investment in rural population data collection would be beneficial, the idea that Earth could contain a few billion more human inhabitants that we thought is extremely unlikely. “If we really are undercounting by that massive amount, it’s a massive news story and goes against all the years of thousands of other datasets.”

When trying to count such a massive population, a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand may slip through the cracks. But a few million or even billion would upend our understanding of human occupation on this planet. Scientists will need a bit more evidence before rethinking decades of dataset research.

“Back in the 40’s or 50’s it was estimated that the Earth could easily support 40 Billion people..”

Uh not just no but hell no.

If 40 billion humans consumed energy at American levels, they would use approximately 10,640 exajoules of energy annually.

[Average U.S. per capita energy consumption: Approximately 266 gigajoules (GJ) per year. This is equivalent to 0.000266 exajoules (EJ) per year, as 1 exajoule = 1,000,000 gigajoules.]

^^^^ multiply this by 40 billion.

the total world primary energy consumption from all sources in 2023 was approximately 604 exajoules. 80% of that was fossil fuels with a limited supply.

one exajoule (EJ) is equivalent to approximately 174 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

10,640 exajoules of energy annually the equivalent is 1.85136 trillion barrels of oil per year equivalent.

NO FING WAY does the industry produce that level of oil for a single year.

Global technically recoverable oil at any price is estimated at around 1.6 trillion barrels, while proven reserves are approximately 1.65 trillion barrels, and unproven (undiscovered) reserves are estimated to be around 3 trillion barrels.

Yeah no way 40 billion the world is going to struggle with 9 billion when not if they demand even EU levels of energy consumption..

If 9 billion humans consumed energy at USA per capita levels, the total annual energy consumption would be approximately 2,565 exajoules. This is more than four times the world’s current total annual energy consumption (around 604-620 exajoules in 2023).

2,565 exajoules of energy, provided by an 80% oil and 20% coal split, is equivalent to approximately 350.3 billion barrels of oil and 27.3 billion short tons of coal annually and growing with every new human added.

Annual energy from oil:(2565EJ times 0.80=2052EJ

Annual energy from coal:2565EJ times 0.20=513EJ

The technically recoverable resources of each at any cost would last at these consumption levels

Oil: 4.46 years
Coal: 50.1 years

You cannot have 9 billion living at USA levels on this planet using fossil fuels it is mathematically impossible in the long term.

Nukes could do it but you need to Henry Ford mass produce them.

Total annual energy requirement (2,565 EJ) by the annual energy output of a single 1.5 gigawatt reactor (0.047304EJ/year) = 54,225 1.5 gigawatt reactors would be needed to supply 2,565 exajoules of energy annually.

Solar absolutely can do it it’s the largest single source of primary energy by far on the planet.

The total solar energy striking the Earth’s land surface per year is approximately 3.4 to 3.85 million exajoules.

It would take 1.2% of the area of the Sahara to provide the 640EJ to provide 2565EJ is nearly exactly four times more. So 4.8% of the Sahara lifts all of humanity to USA levels of energy consumption. Of course you wouldn’t do it in one spot but every desert on war th between 30N and 30S has nearly identical insolation rates so really any land area of equal size spread out anywhere between 30-30 would work.

Engineered Geothermal could do it as well.

“A 2006 MIT report estimated that over 200 ZJ (200,000 EJ) would be extractable with existing technology (at that time) from enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) in the United States alone, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements.”

This is the tech that unlocks the top 10km not 3km they are getting rates of penetration of 5 meters per hour in solid granite. 3000 metres is just 25 days of drilling. That’s shorter than a typical deep SWD well in the Permian basin.

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-firm-record-breaking-drill

EGS works everywhere on this planet the hydraulic stimulation aka fracking to make a EGS system is identical to shale wells it opens up tens of cubic MILES of rock for heat mining.

Solar, nukes, geothermal those are the only way to have 8-9-10+ billion humans at EU levels of energy consumption let alone USA levels.

Again it’s just math, which doesn’t have feelings, beliefs, politics, gut feelings or some other nonsense.

Math it’s universal.

For those curious...A typical 8” EGS wellbore pair at a depth of 3 km can produce approximately 47,300 to 473,000 gigajoules (GJ) of electrical energy per year. Based on the geothermal gradient at that location by the time you get to 10km it’s almost equal for most places on earth and it’s triple to five times as much vs 3km in raw energy recovery.

It would produce three times as much as direct heating use at 130-150C such as district heating or using absorption chillers for cooling with a COP of 1.2-1.4 for double effect chillers so 3x times another 1.4x cooling due to physics is always more efficient vs direct heating or worse thermal to mechanical to electrical conversion.

The MMW drill is a fundamental shift in drilling tech it is using what was formerly classified direct energy weapons tech developed for Starwars missile defense. The gigatron is that tech. It rips up granite, basalt, even quartzite with ease.

So how many well bores for 640 EJ ?

A total of 1,353,066 wellbores would be needed to produce 640 exajoules of energy per year, with each wellbore producing 473,000 GJ per year
For comparison...

The Texas Water Development Board estimates about 1.75 million wells have been drilled in Texas since 1900

So Texas alone has drilled enough holes to have provided the worlds total energy consumption if those were EGS wells. That alone should wake some people up.

You could use 12% efficient but ultra cheap Perovskite solar cell in the wild and the land area would only double to 2.4% for 640EJ still not a lot on a species level.

Perovskite solar cell efficiency has reached over 26% for single-junction cells and nearly 35% for perovskite-silicon tandem cells in laboratory settings. These newer cells open up the dual band gap market at sub 10 cent per watt of PVOUT. It’s when not if. Bifacial panels of silicon can be had today whole sale for 9 cents per watt of capacity by the pallet of them delivered. Again it’s not the 1990s anymore this is 2025 and the 21st century is fundamentally different form the 20th. Old folks struggle to grasp that fact. It’s not the same world that’s just facts.

“Have you heard of a Pebble Bed Reactor (PBR)?.................”

Yes South Africa, Germany both had experimental ones, China has two in experimental status right now.

TRISO fuel is impressive it can get to crazy high burn ups....maximum burnup for TRISO fuel is around 20% FIMA (fissions per initial heavy metal atom)

Huge fan, can’t melt down, reaches 1000C temps with either helium or molten salt cooling so industrial heat and more importantly heat storage tech works with it.

Take the graphite out and use silicon carbide for the buffer and shells and chloride salts you can also do fast spectrum or epithermal spectrum. Breed ratio is not as good as a liquid metal fast reactor but it is above 1 so once you start it you only need depleted uranium supplies.

Problem is C14 all that graphite in the pebbles gets irradiated and a good amount of it ends up as C14 and 5000 year half life’s not ideal given how biologically active carbon is.

It’s also super difficult to reprocess pebbles they resist nitric acid you have to crush and burn the graphite out and the silicon carbide too. Then you have CO2 gas that’s loaded with C14 carrying CO2 that is a disaster waiting to happen you need to turn all that CO2 back to solid graphite and bury it in a medium level waste storage repository for at least 10 half lives so 50,000 years this is the valid argument against pebble bed reactors.

My preferred reactors are.

Molten sodium cooled fast reactor in both Aalo sized modular and BN1200 sized gigawatt scale.(reprocessing off site like Rosatom does)

Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) with dozens of 500MW modules all sharing a single reprocessing plant onsite

Molten salt cooled fast reactor with on-site metal fuel reprocessing for high temp applications 1000C+ with NaCl salts.

D-D catalyst fusion fission hybrid breeder with stainless clad metal uranium first wall fuel pins as the neutron multiplication and fission energy booster 50-200x energy gains vs fusion Q level. Surrounded by a water breeding blanket with light water for neutron capture to deuterium fuel and 7% uranium nitrite for Pu breeding of crazy amounts per year 8000kg for 1000mw of fission hybrid thermal in the inner part. You can also use stainless clad metallic actinides instead of uranium for the fission multiplier Np,Am,Cf all have higher multiplication rates vs U238 since they fast and thermal neutron fission plus you are burning up all the long lived trans uranium elements in one go. The support ratio for my next face reactor can reach 100+ to one.

CANDU in a slightly enriched MOX fueled at 1.2% Pu 239 for triple the fuel life vs natural uranium and one third rhe spent fuel mass to reprocess. You only need to remove fission products and add Pu239 back to 1.2% given CANDU conversion ratio of 0.8 you need 40 ish kg per year of Pu239 from the hybrid breeder.using this slightly enriched MOX fuel cycle a single 1gigawatt fusion fission hybrid supports 200 one gigawatt CANDU. <<<<this is the way.

CANDU are cheap to build the S.Koreans did them for $2800/kw on time and on budget. Do more everywhere and in bulk there is no shortage of deuterium it’s 46 trillion tonnes in the ocean.

Graphene makes for a much better way to get at deuterium not only in seawater but in that liquid breeder blanket too. Even without graphene tech existing methods more than efficient enough. The heavy water doesn’t get used up in a CANDU it’s recycled ,purified and reused only small amounts of make up are needed for the kg lost to neutron captures to tritium but that’s...fusion fuel for the hybrid feeding the CANDU it closes the cycle elegantly.

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/graphene-filters-could-cut-the-cost-of-heavy-water-production-4772785/

“Or launch it into the Sun..................”

People and my students always say that , my reply always the same. Mass to orbit is expensive to LEO...

The delta-v required to go from Earth’s surface to the Sun is approximately 31.5 km/s to 33 km/s, depending on the starting point and transfer method. This is the combined delta-v needed to escape Earth’s gravity (around 11.2 km/s from the surface) and to cancel out Earth’s orbital velocity (about 29.8 km/s). The total delta-v can vary depending on factors like the initial orbit and the chosen trajectory, such as a Hohmann transfer.

Ironically you would need nuclear powered.rockets for such a delta V requirement. Crazy expensive and if you had a accident and the payload didn’t make escape velocity and fell back at even LEO orbital velocity it would burn up all the carbon even in solid form. This would release all the C14 directly into the air the worst possible case.

No you turn the CO2 back to solid graphite and bury it in Permian age salt mines that are geologically stable for hundreds of millions of years. Or you drill down into geo stable granite like the MMW just did in Central Texas that granite batholith they just drilled is 1+ billion years old it will still be stable in a million , ten million plus years drill bores down that pack the waste in stainless steel then copper casing and than bentonite clay cement it in the bottom 2km of a 3km deep hole.

Or go to the Permian and drill into shale again stable for 100+ million years drill down under the oil producing strata and turn horizontal go 20000+ feet lateral with a slight toe up from the heal. Tractor said stainless clad copper cased waste up to the toe and all the way back till 500 feet from the heal again cement it all in with bentonite clay cement walk away it’s in stable strata problem solved forever millions of years stable it needs 50,000 for C14, 1 million for the four long lived fission products if you don’t use fast spectrum reactor to transmute them.

Every one of these is fast reactor fuel of excellence.

Americium 243: 7,370 years
Curium 247:(15.6x10^6) years
Plutonium 239: 24,000 years
Plutonium 240: 6,560 years
Americium 241: 432 years
Curium 244: 18 years
Neptunium 237: 2.14 million years
Actinium 227: 21.77 years
Neptunium 239: 2.4 days

All of these are long lived fission products they start out as less radioactive than natural uranium due to their long half lives but you don’t want them in the biosphere some can bioaccumullate.

technetium-99 (211,000) years
selenium-79 (327,000) years
zirconium-93 (1.61) million years
cesium-135 (2.3) million years
palladium-107 (6.5) million years
iodine-129 (15.7) million years)

Only Tc & Id are water soluble and when mixed with molten boronsilicate glass cannot leach into water at all. They would be cased in steel, copper , cement, well bore casing , more concrete then water impermeable shale or solid granite so totally immobilized.

“They don’t want any cheap and long lasting energy sources at all. They may say they do, but the powers that be do not. Limitless energy means freedom and that is not allowed. ...................”

And yet China is installing a Texas sized grid worth of solar every so 6 months and another Texas sized grid worth of wind in the same time frame while building 150 reactors in the next ten years they are an all in for long term energy sources. They don’t do climate change nor do they care about carbon they do have engineers who did the math and with 1.4 billion they need all the long term energy sources they can get. They import coal and oil almost all of it so there is a real incentive to get away from that fast it’s a national security issue for them. The greens in the West will always be anti social that’s who they are. They can’t get away with it in China they just kill then there and harvest their organs too boot.

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