The only graph that really matters ...

[Smiles]

Malthus got it right (in general, sparing details). We're doomed! And rather soon actually.
Mind you, we are all individually doomed in the existential arena anyway, but this graph points very dramatically to a nasty fate for the whole planet sometime in the next few hundred years, (as long as it doesn't happen By Other Means).

This graph is quite undeniable (unlike climate change which, though quite true, is denied or ignored by billions), irreversible, inevitable, and frankly non-fixable unless horribly draconian stuff is not legislated by governments en masse and in tandem.

Forget natural disasters, depressions, wars, periodic famines in mostly poor countries etc etc etc all those calamity's pale in comparison to the very simple fact that soon there will just too many damn people on this (now) green earth to feed.

This famous (but often ignored) graph only extrapolates out as far as 2025, but it's just a century beyond that when the shit will really start hitting the fan. I have no kids or grand kids but I have loads of friends who do. For them, I think this will a sad and ravaged planet to live on.

[Sen Yai]

Smiles, I don't think you have interpreted the data in the graph correctly and the future may not be quite as bleak as you think.

I've turned your graph on it's side and stuck a line through the year 2000 to make to easier to see the trend:



It is the rate of increase in population that is alarming and you can see that the world population doubled from 1 to 2 billion between approx 1980 and 2000 (according to your graph) which is a period of just 20 years. But it doubled again from 2 to 4 billion in a very short period around the turn of the century - it's not really possible to scale the time period here because the curve on the graph is so steep.

However, the rate of increase suggested by your graph then slows significantly with the next doubling of the population (from 4 to 8 billion) taking maybe 10 years again. The curve then suggests that the rate of increase slows dramatically and the we could predict that the next doubling of the population (at a point some 15cm /6") to the right will probably never be reached.

Google has a nice tool (powered by stats from the world bank)that allows you to produce comparative graphs for the rate of population increase in various countries of the world. Predictably, the most significant rates of growth are seen in China and India, but a comparison between western European nations and the USA is also interesting.

There are some answers of course:



or

[Thai Dyed]

you can see that the world population doubled from 1 to 2 billion between approx 1980 and 2000 (according to your graph) which is a period of just 20 years. But it doubled again from 2 to 4 billion in a very short period around the turn of the century

Actually, the world population in 1927 was about 2 billion. By 1974 it was 4 billion. Today it is just short of 7 billion.

Clean water is an enormous problem. The seas are all but fished out. Not to mention the all too frequent occurrence of "Black Swan" events. I think the situation is hopeless and will become worse by leaps and bounds. What? Fifty years? That begins to sound like an eternity. I'd forget about the century long predictions.

I think J. G. Ballard got it right in 1960 when he said: "It┬╣s always been assumed that the evolutionary slope reaches forever upwards, but in fact the peak has already been reached, the pathway now leads downwards to the common biological grave. It┬╣s a despairing and at present unacceptable vision of the future, but it┬╣s the only one." -J. G. Ballard, "The Voices of Time", 1960.

The solution has been with us since the year 1729 when Jonathan Swift wrote his famous essay "A Modest Proposal" http://emotionalliteracyeducation.co...ne/mdprp10.htm. For those who cannot be bothered to read it here is the essential quote from the piece:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year
old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether
stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it
will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

What Smiles is telling us with this graph is that humanity has been getting it wrong in recent centuries.
The true villains of our species are, in fact, the likes of Louis Pasteur; Joseph Lister and Alexander Fleming.
Our receivers of Nobel prizes should have been philanthropists like Stalin; Hitler,Mao and great inventors like Mikhail Kalashnikov and Robert Oppenheimer.
Allied planes should not now be bombing Gaddafi or the Taliban but their targets should be the factories of Glaxo, Pfizer, Roche etc.
Let the Israelis and the Arabs fight it out to the last man - there's enough of us already.
Genocide and starvation are the products of natural selection and do-gooders such as M├йdecins Sans Fronti├иres and Bob Geldoff are grossly irresponsible.

Being gay is, in fact, the responsible choice and has little to do with genetics or environment. We queers, poofs and arse-bandits are saving the planet.

[Thai Dyed]

Being gay is, in fact, the responsible choice and has little to do with genetics or environment. We queers, poofs and arse-bandits are saving the planet.

You are absolutely correct Roger. And while I hate to get all religious about it, this is exactly why I joined the Church of Euthanasia years ago.

http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/

Here is our beloved founder and pastor, Reverend Chrissy Corda:

[attachment=2:28bi31ma]chrissy.jpg[/attachment:28bi31ma][attachment=1:28bi31ma]snuffit1.jpg[/attachment:28bi31ma]

And exactly what you had suggested in your Swift quote, one of my favourite of all church activities, a fetus BBQ:
[attachment=0:28bi31ma]Fetus BBQ.jpg[/attachment:28bi31ma]

I think equally important is how life expectancy has changed in the last 200 years.

Here is a fascinating You Tube clips that makes statistics more than just some dry numbers.
[youtube:13tfzoee]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo[/youtube:13tfzoee]

[thonglor55]

We're doomed! And rather soon actually.

And it's not yet April 1. Nice try, Chicken Little.

[Beachlover]

We're doomed! And rather soon actually.

Smiles, why would you care? You'll probably be dead in 20-30 years. :rolling:

[jinks]

You'll probably be dead in 20-30 years. :rolling:

You two might be, I however intend to outlive everybody.

If I get it right there will be no mourners at my burning.

[Thai Dyed]

Here are some more stunning charts, 23 of them, from a financial news source today to add to that of Smiles on population:

http://www.businessinsider.com/human-pr ... 011-3?op=1

I think that anyone expecting a rosy future, in any way, shape, or form, is out of his fucking mind.