How many people three centuries from now? UN thinks it knows [Year 2300: 9 Billion People]

DeepikaGlobal ^ | December 9, 2003 | AFP

[yonif]

United Nations, December 9 : Stretching its previous attempts to predict the future, the United Nations said on Tuesday the world will be crowded with nine billion people when the year 2300 rolls around three centuries from now.

In what it called a "groundbreaking" statistical achievement, the UN's population department said it was now able to make extended long-range predictions that easily beat earlier forecasts, which only went to 2150.

The baby-makers of the future, however, will have to cooperate.

According to the "medium fertility scenario," the rate of new births will be less than the death rate for around 100 years before the two level out, bringing global population from 6.1 billion now to nine billion in 2300.

But if the fertility rate is one-quarter of a child higher, the earth will be teeming with 36.4 billion people in 300 years. One-quarter of a child less, and humankind's numbers decline to 2.3 billion.

One thing the UN report made absolutely clear: if national fertility rates remain the same as between 1995-2000, the planet will have 134 trillion people by the year 2300 -- or 22,000 times as many people as are alive today.

That, it said, is "a definitely impossible outcome."

[yonif]

I hope by 2300 the UN will long be gone.

[Az Joe]

I remember the "Earth Day" Leftists in the 60s saying we'd have 9 billion by 2030. Friggin loons.

[GeronL]

retards! Ain't no way they can guess something so far off.... 9 Billion??? We're gonna hit that in 200 years for petes' sake, they are WAY off...

Oh they mean people who live on this planet and NOT the colonies??

[GeronL]

134 trillion people by the year 2300

on how many planets?? =o)

[Andy from Beaverton]

Will Muslims outnumber Christians or will this cult vanish from the planet?

[dangus]

In 1970, the UN thought there would be 30 billion people in the world by 2100. Today, they're guessing 10. Birth rates and Population growth have actually been significantly *below* Un's minimum projections. Three reasons: industrializing nations spontaneously reduce population growth; anti-poverty initiatives which resulted in higher birth rates (i.e., encouraging bottle feeding when breast feeding acts as a modest birth control.); declining birth rates failed to stabilize.

My guess: we peak at 8 billion in 2040. China loses 120 million per decade by 2050. Sounds too low? It sounded much more absurd when I first predicted it in 1988.

[Judith Anne]

Fascinating. I don't think it will happen, though. Reason is, I think there are some declining populations. China's one-child policy means fewer girls, I think the numbers there will decline.

I think the west has some declining numbers too. Even though US population has risen, a lot of the rise is due to illegal immigration.

[meenie]

The "humankind" species will kill itself off before it reachs the saturation point, so the UN might as well relax and find something else to do.

[geopyg]

A ggogle search on that 1968 book brought up this little tidbit:

"Population Bomb contained no specific statements about resources that could be checked. Ehrlich did, however make specific statements about resources in Population, Resources, Environment, published in 1970, as follows:

The U.S. should by now have run out of reserves of crude oil, uranium, manganese, cobalt, copper, chromium, nickel, lead, zinc, tin, aluminum, gold, silver and platinum.

The world should have already run out of each of the following minerals: lead, zinc, tin, gold, silver, platinum, and should run out of natural gas, copper and tungsten about the year 2000, and crude oil shortly thereafter."

I could easily find what he thought the population would be.

[Nan48]

There won't be anybody left if the gays and abortionists have their way.

[geopyg]

Do these estimates take into account the "unforeseen" event of a killer flu, ebola, etc? The black plague is reported to have killed 30%-40% of Europe's population and up to 2/3rds of China's in the 1300's (based on a couple things I saw on the net). Obviously our medicine is better, but I know they are worried if an entirely new flu shows up some year with no vaccine for it.

[Consort]

For better or worse, people alive today represent what might be the final generation of humankind as we have know it throughout human existence. The next generation will mark the beginning of the first "Artificial Generation": humans born with genetically altered genes and traits, consuming genetically altered foods, producing genetically altered offspring. These changes will be proliferated by the U.N., national governments, multi-national medical corporations, and other global entities. The process can not be reversed.

This New Mankind will invoke a New Mentality, one with different perspectives on science, religion, spirituality, morality, and philosophy -- all things physical, psychic, mental, metaphysical, and noetic. The human psyche will be diminished or enhanced and the ripple effect will be global and profound. The potential implications on consciousness and awareness are as numerous as the permutations within the human gene....for better or for worse.

[WOSG]

Actually there will be 9 billion people by 2050, then population may actually decline...

[Drammach]

Likewise, another book called "Stand on Zanzibar" made similar claims about overpopulation.

Those prophecies also failed to materialize.

[Michael.SF.]

Have they taken into consideration the famine of 2130-2155?

or the great flood caused, by global warming, in 2076?

Or the millions of seniors killed by the policies GHWB IV during his 16 years as President?

[LibWhacker]

And by 2300 if my present rate of accelerating weight gain continues, I'll weigh 9,000 pounds!

[LonghornFreeper]

The stupidity of even attempting to predict that far in the future is amazing. Three hundred years ago the New World was just beginning colonization and the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy. The world has changed as much in the last 300 years as it did in all the rest of history combined, since the Agricultural Revolution and the dawn of civilization.

[dangus]

We *are* running out of silver, or we would be if we had not made silver-based photography obselete.