World Population to hit 7 Billion in 2012.

i can't say i'm particularly surprised. violent, destitute cultures tend to be fairly misogynistic. it doesn't help, of course, that wanting to have fewer kids generally runs counter to the survival of the family and culture, in such circumstances.

There isn't necessarily more food in developed countries, a lot of the food in developed countries is lost to export and waste. In America 40-50% of the food produced is lost to waste, while that figure isn't as bad in the developed countries of Europe their food waste is still a lot higher than in developing countries. Germany, which has a declining population, is one of the world's largest exporters of food. Just because a country is growing more food doesn't mean it's using more food, if you export a quarter of the food grown in your country to other countries then that food obviously would not contribute to the population growth of your country it would contribute to the country that's receiving it and actually using. The same with food waste, food waste is considerably higher in developed countries and since that food is being disposed of instead of consumed obviously it's not going to contribute to population growth.

Emigration is also a large factor in declining populations in Europe. Most of the countries in Europe that have a declining population are former Soviet bloc countries, large numbers of working age adults emigrated to Western Europe in search of better opportunities and working conditions. Because most of these countries are now members of the European Union their citizens can move freely to countries with better opportunities without having to wait for visas or apply for a citizenship. With the switch to the Euro a lot of countries that had weaker economies before the merge have seen the cost of living increase while wages stayed the same which makes emigration look more desirable to the young adults joining the workforce.

Um. You're aware you're asking for software to do stuff reliably, and indefinitely?

despite what experience with windoze might lead one to believe, it's actually quite possible to design software that, basically, doesn't fail--and which fails gracefully if the near-impossible happens.

True, ish. But the world has to be convinced of that. Not easy. I remain unconvinced, for sure. Especially about the "indefinitely" bit, since it requires spare capacity, which in turn adds to the risk.

I do wish you'd quote rather than just posting. It makes these things easier.

All true and good, but many times the women of these nation still want a much higher amount of children then we in the west have. E.g, they are having 7 children and they only want 4-5. The culture and location still demands more children.

*Link: Oh wait, I learned that one from a book that isn't online and thus can't link. Damn you college, making me learn through unlinkable sources.

If you need any evidence that Americans have more food, just look at their asses. 'Nuff said.

I almost cried in ecology class when we went over health problems. Page 1, a bunch of starving children who you could count every bone in their body, and could actually detail their internal organs below the rib cage. Famine.

Page 2, an American child who more closely resembles the Michellen (SC?) man than a human being. Obesity.

I find obesity to be disgusting not because it offends my eyes, but because it offends me morally. The fact that anyone could do that to themselves while someone is starving infuriates me.

while i'm not a fan of obesity, i'm not sure how maintaining a healthy body weight is related to people starving halfway around the world.

It's not really that closely related, except that it refutes the ridiculous argument about the correlation between population and food availability.

Anal FTW

You're right it's almost as ridiculous an idea as the belief that humans for some reason would be exempt from a principal that governs every other species one Earth. When the current boom in population started 10,000 years ago it had nothing to do with a culture that started practicing a new form of agriculture in which they destroyed the ecosystem so that they could convert the land to exclusively provide food for humans. No, the sudden population boom they experienced was because they stopped using contraceptives and began fucking like rabbits.

For 300,000 years all the hunter-gatherer tribes since the first homo-sapiens evolved practiced safe sex and good family planning, that is why their population eventually leveled out, it couldn't have anything to do with how it coincidentally leveled out at the population the Earth can support from hunting and gathering. No, these tribes were developed nations, and when that one culture created a new kind of agrarian society they became a third world country and thats why their population miraculously exploded and grew at a rate much greater than any other culture on Earth. It had nothing to do with the fact that their method of farming produced a much greater amount of food than could be gathered from hunting and gathering. And when that culture kept growing and growing and began outnumbering their neighboring tribes the neighboring tribes didn't start experiencing a population boom because they were assimilated by the original culture and adopted their practices of farming, no it was because they adopted the growing third world cultures ways and decided to have sex more often without using birth control.

And now 10,000 years later that culture hasn't spread it's ways to every corner of the globe like a plague, that has nothing to do with why our population has coincidentally been growing exponentially for the past 10,000 years when it remained relatively stable for the first 300,000 years of human history. The fact that every year for the past ten thousand years we've converted more of the world into land used to create food for humans has nothing to do with the population increasing exponentially every year, that's just silly.

And the obesity problem in America is obviously proof that this is all just communist lies. Everyone knows that obesity isn't caused by eating foods that are filled with fats, sugar, preservatives and all kinds of other unhealthy little chemicals or a lack of regular exercise, no obesity is caused by eating more than anyone else. That proves that food and population are connected even though America's population is still on the steady rise so Americans obesity obviously proves that food and population are not linked. I'm glad you could enlighten my feeble little mind.

birth rate and food sources aren't actually linked like that. animals don't have more babies when there's more food--they have more surviving babies. their babies are born healthier, and don't starve to death. furthermore, animals overpopulate all the time. a slight rise in the local food source leads to a huge population boom, which quickly strips the area of food, leading to a huge die-off, which allows the food source to return to normal levels, which causes a population boom... it's cyclical.

humans break this cycle in two ways. first, they figure out ways to increase the food supply; second, they increase the food supply of other populations to some extent. that is to say, if a population is starving, it frequently gets at least a minimal level of assistance from other populations, allowing the starving population to mitigate some of the die-off that would normally occur.

looks like were doin our part

source

Except unlike most places we can actually support that growth.

A population that grows unmanageable is, of course, a problem... but who decides who gets kids and who doesn't? Who decides which kids get born and which don't? Of course the answers are obvious: no one, since restricting these things is a direct violation of basic human rights (hi China!).

In the end, we're just going to have to make sacrifices, or more likely rely on future scientific advancement to handle the load.

I am actually not that worried about population explosion doomsday scenarios. We can see that industrialized democracies experience a fairly marked decline in family size, given that the survival strategy in these societies is to reduce the number of children to ensure educational opportunities. Of course, this trend is not necessarily true of impoverished segments of society even within these industrialized nations. I would anticipate population growth to start slowing down as more of the "developing world" fully industrializes and urbanizes.

Still, I think we need to do a better job at providing birth control, managing food, eliminating waste of resources, the environmental impact of our cities, etc. In other words, overpopulation is a major concern and the manner in which we choose to deal with it has tremendous impact on quality of life, but I expect the world population basically to level out eventually. I am definitely not advocating apathy or inactivity in regard to population management.