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  1. trirnoth says:

    I found it hard to believe, but I had always heard that there were more people alive today than had lived throughout history.
    Sounds like the above was off by a bit.

  2. Olo Baggins of Bywater says:

    #1, think about it…say in 15 years the earth population will go up to 8 bn, an increase of 2.2 bn. TIn the meantime he total who ever lived will go up by 4-6 bn. This is a bit of a WAG, but the principle is right. (if someone has better math, go for it…)

    Those two numbers will never come together.

  3. dusanmal says:

    @#1 That statement was made by philosophers who are not mathematicians.

    Where this graph goes non-scientific is “hypothetical number of people Earth can support”. Though “hypothetical” disclaimer softens it, this number is nonsense, even if we consider only present day technology and resource consumption patterns because there are so many arbitrary “knobs” to adjust it (just one such knob: distribution of standard of life could sway that number for orders of magnitude up or down).

  4. Uncle Dave says:

    #3: A different question is would you want to live in a world with, say, 50 billion people even if we had the tech (energy, food, etc without damaging the environment) to make it possible? I, myself, prefer a bit of elbow room and think there are too many now.

  5. Dallas says:

    I don’t see how Allah can come up with 72 virgins for each possible candidate in a worst case scenario.

    Assuming even excellent quality control, I’m guessing some of those ‘virgins’ are not quite so.

  6. canucklehead says:

    next topic should be Most Recent Common Ancestor. How many of those 106 billion left descendants, and how many were simply evolutionary dead-ends?

  7. ArianeB says:

    We have reached a ceiling on energy production, we cannot generate more energy than we are generating now.

    Everything we have depends on energy: Food, technology, transportation. If the population continues to grow, people will have to settle for less.

  8. ECA says:

    For the few that dont understand.
    Questions to think about.
    How much land is needed for FOOD/MEAT/housing for 1 person.
    How many animals have been devastated in this world ALREADY. Think of the millions of Buffalo that USEd to roam the central USA. figure that at LEAST 1/2 of all animals have lost there land and living conditions. After 2012 a good share of the oceans creatures will NOT be able to reproduce FASTER then we are eating them.
    AS an individual, trying to Live off the land. YOU CANT, any more.(it would be allot harder then in the past)
    Another STRANGE point, is the amount of oxygen and other BREATHABLE material thats required to sustain life on this planet. The more people the MORE chemicals we create the LESS breathable air we will have, unless you can change EVERY large city into a repository for TREES(already been tried, and lost).
    10% of this planet is arable soil. Thats LAND that can be used to grow food. Unless you wish to decimate the Forests of the world(as in S. america) we are limited in WHERE we can grow food.
    We have already added enough chemicals to grow 10 times the food in a smaller area.
    We have created plants that NATURE didnt create, and I wonder if we should be eating it as the MICE/RATS other animals wont.
    Whats left for the future? Eating our dead, and using MORE CHEMICALS.

  9. Father says:

    Dallas, are we sure Allah promised FEMALE virgins? If we had 100 million martyrs, Allah could satisfy his obligation for the first 100 million virgins by having everyone do exactly one brother-in-arms (so to speak). Then, if Allah was smart, he could do a little rectoplasty on each man and they’d each be ready for another round. Seems easier than creating 7.2 billion fresh virgins, and raising them to be the age of consent.

    If Allah would just give each potential martyr the virgins right now, he’d be happy enough to praise Allah every moment he wasn’t rejoycing in Allah’s gifts.

  10. Steve S says:

    ECA said,
    “How much land is needed for FOOD/MEAT/housing for 1 person.
    How many animals have been devastated in this world ALREADY.
    After 2012 a good share of the oceans creatures will NOT be able to reproduce FASTER then we are eating them.”
    .
    Hmmmm. Well one thing we will have plenty of is…. People.
    Press release:
    We at the Soylent Corporation have created a solution to the worlds food shortage. A new, high protein food source based on the most prevalent source of meat on earth.
    We call it…. “Soylent Green”.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

  11. Mike Craig says:

    The chart is misleading insofar as it represents the current population as about .4% instead of the 6.4% of all births that should be shown. When shown a chart like this one we measure the area, not the radius (Homer Simpson when faced with a pizza choice does a very good job of calculating this). A pie chart or stacked column chart would be better.

    So the message I get from this is that over six percent of all the people who have ever lived are alive right now. Which when you compare our life expectancy to our history is pretty amazing.

  12. soundwash says:

    What propaganda arm put this out?

    I would point out that our “modern” science is neither “science” “modern” nor accurate. It is political and religious dogma. f’k, everyone still believes the 19th century science of newton and einstein physics are what makes “the universe” work.

    #7 we have never even *touched* our energy potential. we are “controlled” by the illusion of finite energy resources. You can produce infinite energy using resonant electromagnetics and/or gravity. -toroidal fields etc.

    Because we have power hungry Lunatics controlling every facet of the planet and the humans on it, this technology remains suppressed. What these lunatics have done is squandered [destroyed] the mineral resources of the planet. -for which almost all living things on this [and including] the planet cannot “live” without.

    The coming pole flip will “refresh” the planet, and ‘lighten’ all life, as well as the human load a bit. -and ice ages are always a good thing when it comes to making a planet such as ours “renew” itself. (I really hope the hundreds of nuclear reactors either “scram” or are “neutralized” prior to the change. it would put a real damper on the whole “renewal process”.)

    [If the Norway spiral is any indication, Lunatics A, B & C will launch WW3 with electromagnetic / particle / gravity weapons rather than conventional nukes]

    Just have to hope the lunatics in possession of advanced technology do not prevent this natural cycle from happening.

    In any case…now worries..our population will be kept in check. the eugenics crowd currently in control will see to that fact, to be sure.

    Natural Cycles will take care of the rest.

    This has all happened before and will happen again.

    -s

  13. Skeptic says:

    Show us the data?
    Follow the money!
    Canadians, follow the loonie!
    Is there a consensus of this census?
    Is there a census of the consensus?
    Is there any sense of sense?
    And he’s only a software developer!
    A baby is software… but only if it’s for sale.
    Scam alert! He wants to impose tacks on posters!
    Posters are already overtacked.
    And poster tacks won’t solve overpopulation.
    What we need is a new world order…
    We should switch orbits with Mars.
    Or everyone just line up alphabetically.

    …or just shoot me now…

  14. ECA says:

    #14
    BANG!
    POW!
    POP POP POP!!
    Dam he wont die.

  15. deowll says:

    The problem is your statement like the chart is based on a WAG.

    If we do manage to get fusion to work effectively the amount of energy available is going to be staggering.

    As has always been the case the future is not known.

  16. ArianeB says:

    “Yep. There is absolutely no way to replace obsolete power plants with nuclear plants. It’s completely impossible.”

    I know you are trying to be sarcastic, but you are actually telling the truth and don’t even know it.

    If Nuclear Power plants are so great why has none been built in America in 30 years? Answer: They are an extremely bad investment.

    The capital investment needed to build a nuclear plant, makes it unprofitable for at least 15 years, and that is if everything goes right with the regulators, and the prices of Uranium remain stable (which they wont). The risks are huge! A private corporation in Ontario Canada attempted to get investors interested in a new nuclear plant there. They quit when they could not raise more than 10% of the initial costs.

    The only country investing heavily in Nuclear energy is France and they are doing it almost entirely at taxpayer expense. That would never go over well here in the US.

    Solar and Wind have smaller start up costs and could become profitable in only 7 years, and yet they are having trouble finding investors as well.

    Starting around 2015, world oil production is likely to drop 4%-7% a year. Where is the trillion dollars needed to build the nuclear plants needed to replace that oil going to come from? What about the next trillion dollars in 2016?

  17. Somebody says:

    “If we do manage to get fusion to work effectively the amount of energy available is going to be staggering.”

    Maybe, but fusion has its own weird sort of Moore’s law:

    “Practical fusion is 25 years away.”

    It’s been that way all my life and will probably be so all of yours as well.

  18. LOWER CASE SCREEN NAME says:

    The question isn’t “how many humans have ever lived?”. The question is “How many humans have ever driven a SUV/truck 600+ miles in one day, many times?” Those are the humans that matter most.


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