World population may reach 9.2 billion by 2050

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17605186/

UNITED NATIONS - The world’s population will likely reach 9.2 billion in 2050, with virtually all new growth occurring in the developing world, a U.N. report said Tuesday.

According to the U.N. Population Division’s 2006 estimate, the world’s population will likely increase by 2.5 billion people over the next 43 years from the current 6.7 billion — a rise equivalent to the number of people in the world in 1950.

Hania Zlotnik, the division’s director, said an important change in the new population estimate is a decrease in expected deaths from AIDS because of the rising use of anti-retroviral drugs and a downward revision of the prevalence of the disease in some countries.

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And you thought life was interesting now. We'll have the same problems we have today, just on a bigger scale. Unless we figure out how to eradicate every current and future disease/virus(we have to figure out a way to stop evolution), and how to make everyone have a good paying job with ever increasing benefits, how to get everyone food, how to completely integrate every culture and peoples so that all those young workers actually want to help the aging West which has been bombing the crap out of them for the last few decades, how to make sure people don't become even more expendable than we already are(most of us are in the way, all we do is consume cheap crap), and how to keep order(more surveillance cameras, more banning or taxing of resources so that we don't completely destroy ourselves since our entire way of life is based on the lack of limits, etc). I'm sure I missed a few.

Yeah, 2007 is a nice walk around a lake(still chemically poisoned, don't get me wrong) compared to what we'll have to do in 40-some years just to stay at normal. I'll barely be into my retirement by then. Unless that age is raised, which it will be, unless all those young workers from the developing world support me. Hi Africa :hi:

[Duer 157099]

1. Hahahah, I *so* doubt it

No, a definite thinning of the herd is on someone's agenda, somewhere.

[opihimoimoi]

2. A Massive DIE OFF most likely will thin the herd down to 10,000 or so.. perhaps less

we are a cancer on the cell called Earth

[redqueen]

3. Or maybe not...

If we were placing bets on what sort of thing would end that trend, I'd bet on a superbug.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030301311.html

[Rydz777]

4. Malthus

For generations we have sneered at old Malthus. He may have the last laugh after all.

[NNadir]

9. Point well taken.

[phantom power]

5. Na. Ga. Happen.

[GliderGuider]

6. Here's how I think it will unfold

We will peak at 7.5 billion in 2020, and thereafter we will decline to 4 billion by 2050, 2 billion by 2080 and 1 billion by 2100. We'll stabilize at half a billion sometime in the following century.

Starvation and pandemics will do it. We'll see the first signs of the dieoff in 2020 when oil production has dropped to 60% of its current levels and the marginal nations are outbid for fuel and fertilizer.

Crap, I hate being so sure of a scenario this bad.

[Pangolin]

7. Don't forget Climate Change flooding Bangledesh....

and providing random droughts in formerly productive croplands. Some huge portion of the worlds population lives at or near sea level in the tropical storm zone. Those people are going to be severly stressed.

Another huge portion of the world lives on farms that provide a small margin above subsistance crops in a good year. They are going to get fewer and fewer good years coming up ahead.

The first world has repeatedly demonstrated that the starvation of the poor in the third world is of little concern to us. This will not change for the better if the rich nations start to suffer resource shortages themselves.

[4dsc]

10. I cannot wait for 2020!!!

those dropping oil productions will be a the end of it all!! And 60% by 2020 is going to be a thing to behold!!

[brokensymmetry]

11. I agree with your scenario. (mostly)

I think the curve of the decline may be a bit more steep -
say, 2 billion in 2050. Famine does bad things...

[Nihil]

8. Only if they add corpses & skeletons to the total of living.

I can't believe that the "U.N. Population Division" has been so busy
inside its own little ivory tower that it has failed to notice what
is happening in the world beyond their spreadsheets.

(I've just deleted the rest of this post ... I give up ... :banghead:)