When do you think we'll reach 7 billion people in the world? When do you think we'll stop growing and begin declining?

From www.overpopulation.org:

1 billion in 1804,
2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
3 billion in 1960 (33 years)
4 billion in 1974 (13 years)
5 billion in 1987 (12 years)
6 billion in 1999 (12 years)
7 billion in 2013 (14 years - projected)
8 billion in 2028 (15 years - projected)
10.7 (high) or 8.9 (middle) or 7.3 (low) billion projected for 2050


I don't know about decline. Birth rates have fallen dramatically in industrialized countries, but death rates have fallen more.

Here's the results of one study:

"the population could rise from its present level of 6 billion to about 9 billion in 2070, then sink to 8.4 billion in 2100. This is one billion fewer than a United Nations estimate."

Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov (2001)

I keep getting the uneasy feeling that when there will be 10 billion persons in the world, then that number will fall to what it is now. You seem to be saying that the cause will not be a major war, plague, or comet.

I just would like to comment, that considering the higher number of people in the world today vs 200 years ago when populations were being wiped out by plagues and famine, We seem to be doing considerably better feeding people and providing medical treatment. Even though there are five billion more people on the planet now than there were back then.

Maybe, barring a major disaster like a comet, the world will be even better off the more the population grows.

We just have to work out the problems that come with this population boom like terrorism, global warming and the depletion of fuel. There will come a time, if a comet doesn't get us first that the world will be so populated and we will have so few resources left that we will see famine and plague, the likes of which human kind has never seen before, because by then the viruses that we have tried to eliminate over the years will come back with a vengeance, mutated into something that modern medicine couldn't keep up with.

Our time will come, we're just now starting to see the effects, a hole in the ozone, a reduction in the polar ice caps, the rising of sea level, the hottest temperatures in the west that this country has seen in 100 years. Viruses that were once thought to be eliminated coming back in a new form that can't be treated.

It's all very scary, but true. The world would be lucky if a comet got to us first, and even that isn't so far fetched. In the last few years there have been two asteroids the size of Rode Island scratching the surface of the earth in a distance that's closer than the moon! And there are hundreds of thousands of objects out there that are on a collusion course with Earth. Most get thrown off course and sucked up by the gas giants like Saturn. But it's happened before,

There are craters in deserts all over the planet that if whatever created them were to hit today, would have a significant impact on the human population.

I don't know the numbers, but scientists have figured out that every few thousand years the world has been hit by an object large enough to end all life on the planet, and we're now 200 years overdue for the next hit...

Maybe I watch too much TLC

Excellent post Billmasters! That was so well though out, I think you left most of us speechless on the subject. I have nothing further to add anyway!