Human evolution: eight million on the way to ten (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 14, 2022, 21:25 (738 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Monday, November 14, 2022, 21:33

And the constant worry about enough food:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/the-world-now-has-8-billion-peop...

'We’ve added our most recent one billion more just since the first term of U.S. President Barack Obama. A mere dozen years after reaching seven billion, the planet most likely will surpass eight billion people sometime around mid-November, the United Nations estimates based on its best demographic projections.

"The actual timing, however, is uncertain. In parts of the world, census data is decades old. During COVID-19 it was virtually impossible for some countries to record every death. Even sophisticated computer models may be off by a year or more. It’s not as if anyone has done a global person-by-person head count.

"But the UN is declaring November 15 as the “Day of Eight Billion” because there is no mistaking the import of this moment. Humans everywhere are living longer, thanks to better health care, cleaner water, and improvements in sanitation, all of which have reduced the prevalence of disease. Fertilizers and irrigation have boosted crop yields and improved nutrition. In many countries, more children are being born, and far fewer are dying.

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"The risks and opportunities of our population boom and parallel resource crisis depend largely on decisions we’ve not yet made. Which will control our future more—the billions of mouths we’ll have to feed, or the billions more brains we could employ to do so?

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“'So far, the overall experience is that the world has been successful in adapting and finding solutions to our problems,” Gerland says. “I think we need to be somewhat optimistic.”

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"Food security is already a concern. More than one-third of the country lives in extreme poverty, a greater number than any other country, including India, which is six times larger. A third of all households include one adult who must skip meals at times for the family to survive. (my bold)

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"Currently at 216 million , the country’s population by some estimates could quadruple by the end of the century. By then it could have more people than China, which has 10 times more land. But that all depends on childbirth rates. All these projections are driven by assumptions, and the reality could be much different. (I think this is an error, from Wikipedia it given: 'The current population of India is 1,411,977,328 as of Saturday':

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/ )

"The UN, a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, and other experts in Vienna, Austria, tend mostly to agree on what the next quarter century holds. Based on past events, at least, few expect another deadly global pandemic quite so soon. Despite crises like the war in Ukraine, neither do demographers yet foresee planet-wide mass migration by mid-century. Most experts see the population topping nine billion roughly by then.

"After that, projections vary greatly. A few years ago, the UN estimated that by 2100, the globe’s population could balloon to 11 billion. Earlier this year, it revised those estimates downward, to about 10.4 billion, thanks to progress in reducing the average number of children born per family. At the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Vienna, researchers in 2018 projected the population could rise to 9.7 billion in 2070 and then fall back to around 9 billion by century’s end. They used different assumptions, largely by asking global experts to weigh in. “The main story is not just about fertility but about progress in fighting child and infant mortality,” says Anne Goujon, population program director for IIASA.

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"And aside from global population estimates, climate change and politics also will likely greatly influence migration between countries. Population in the U.S. and Western Europe has been largely sustained by immigration, but it has become a political hot button. Other countries with declining populations, such as Japan, have been even more reluctant to welcome immigrants.

"Yet the lopsided trends, between booming and declining populations, exacerbated by climate change, will almost certainly increase migration pressure almost everywhere.

“'The only way we can get out of this demographic imbalance,” Vollset says, “is well-managed international collaboration.'”

Comment: note my bold. Both God and we know how important this problem will be. God anticipated it by providing us with a current huge bush of life, which can be an adequate ecosystem for us if managed properly. dhw will scurry to agree, as he has done in the past, and immediately complain about all the necessary dead ends in evolution that acted as ecosystems to feed the burgeoning bush on the way to current size.