I think there could be a big surge in cheap energy due to fracking, methane hydrates etc.
I hope this will allow undeveloped countries to develop, prosper and become better educated, with prosperity and education the birth rate lowers (Japan sells more adult diapers than baby ones) the problem I see is AGW beliefs will interfere, and prevent the poorer countries receiving cheap energy, it is only prosperous countries that care about the environment, the poor flock to polluted, smoggy crowded cities in the hope economic advancement, they leave behind their clean, unpolluted natural environment without a thought.
Advances in healthcare, sanitation, medicines, supply of potable water etc are ensuring that the population of the planet is living longer. Whilst the birth-rate isn’t increasing all that much, the death-rate is slowing considerably and an equilibrium is expected to be reached around the end of the century when the global population is likely to be around the 12 billion mark, where it will remain barring any major disasters or significant changes in attitudes toward births.
This is a significant increase on the seven billion who already populate the planet and are utilising resources faster than the world can produce them.
The population growth in the last 200 years or so has been almost exponential and it has been a struggle for technology to keep up. Indeed, 2010 was the first time in human history when global food production fell below the level required to adequately feed the entire population.
At the moment we have some catching up to do in terms of food production, agricultural advances, medical breakthroughs etc. As the rate at which the population expands begins to slow this will give technology a chance to catch up.
Whilst we’re currently exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet, I am optimistic that in the next 100 years we will be able to increase that capacity to one that matches the global population. There will of course still be great disparities but the situation should improve greatly for the majority of the worlds population.
We’re struggling in places with population at the moment because we haven’t been able to keep up with it, once the population stabilises I don’t think it will be much of an issue, provided that people have been able to migrate away from over populated areas and into areas that are able to cater for their needs.
Climate change is a different prospect as it’s not something we’re addressing all that well and it isn’t something that we, and the rest of the natural world, can easily adapt to.
Whilst we could all live quite comfortably in a warmer world it would mean making massive changes and that’s something that a lot of people aren’t prepared to do voluntarily.
If we’d have started to tackle the issue 50 years ago when it first came to light the chances are that we’d be on top of it by now and would have made massive technological advances in power generation, transportation, manufacturing etc.
My guess is that in 100 or 200 years time people are going to look back and question why we didn’t do more to address climate change whilst we had the chance, instead of ignoring it until it became a major and vastly more expensive problem.
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Enjoy your time away from Answers. Good luck and a prosperous 2014 to you as well.
An interesting question and although I agreed with Trevor answer, I would like to add some thoughts of my own.
As noted the Industrialized countries of the world are seeing their population slow and in some cases reverse. It should however be noted that countries like India who continue to have high birth rates use less than a tenth the resources per person than North America.
As the planet warms disease moves and becomes an ever increasing problem for modern medicine. New viruses threaten a global population that is ever more mobile.
So I would say the two problems work hand in hand. The humans that have survived 200 years from now will have undoubtedly new and greater problems to solve. I can only hope that our lack of responsibility does not leave them in an impossible situation.
Probably AGW. In fact, because of the demographic transition, many nations are relying on immigration to maintain their populations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic...
AGW will compound the population problem by reducing the number of people that Earth can support. And, in a few hundred years, the transition to the post hydrocarbon economy will happen. When it does, people will wonder why AGW denialists got so upset.
Overpopulation will have been solved in 200 years but we'll still be living with significantly more than 7 billion people. It will become cheaper to correct global warming than to deal with the consequences, enough so to overwhelm political considerations, sometime in the next 100 years.
Overpopulation solution will be seen as a consequence of the world becoming richer, better educated, and more technologically advanced.
The time it takes to begin solving climate change will be seen as a failure of human group dynamics, based in our lack of understanding for human psychology - which lack will probably be corrected by science before it results in any positive advances in politics, government, or economics.
Over population has a well established history that it will bring the population back into balance. AGW will still be a problem for the ones that are left even after a population correction occurs.
They are likely to be both salient discussions one or two centuries from now. Ten or twenty centuries from now, it will be anthropogenic climate change, because it is unique our times. Burning fossil fuels is, for all practical and economic purposes, a one time event of a few centuries: almost a blip in the hundreds of thousands of years of history of the human species. But the CO2 will linger in the atmosphere far longer than than. Population growth or decline or both have always been with us and probably always will be.
Good luck in the "real world."
Without high population, you would have much less AGW. The effects of population are easier to see right now, with rain forests being cut down, open pit mining, endangered species in every part of all continents (except Antarctica, some penguins are threatened, but not endangered). AGW is harder to see at this point, so it's hard to make a prediction on just how much it will effect our children and grandchildren.
High population also effects our use on water, and that may very well become a big issue in the next 50 years. A very big issue for many countries. Also, we are running low on petroleum. Fracking has opened up new resources and delayed the "peak oil" scenario, but oil is still becoming more expensive every year. We will need to come up with viable alternatives in a decade's time. Higher fuel efficiency standards will definitely help. But loss of petroleum could affect everything - agriculture, shipping, transportation, which affects jobs, moving food to market, which could lead to food riots and unstability in poorer countries.
We have a way of coming up with solutions and fixes just as they're needed (when people are willing to pay enough money to develop the answers). Water and global warming will be two problems that we may not have enough time to fix, because by the time we're willing to spend large amounts of money on them, the momentum has moved too far and might take centuries for nature to return balances to what our economy is used to.
Population is projected to peak about 2070. I think it might happen sooner than that, it all depends on how fast people become industrialized. When people live on farms, children are an asset (tend the livestock, do chores). When they work for companies, children cost money (food, education). Also with better access to health care, fewer children die of diseases early on. So urbanization drops the birth rate way down. But until the population starts dropping, it will be a real problem. And then we'll worry about how to take care of all of our elders.
Almost by definition, overpopulation will be deemed to have been the greater problem; the CAGW 'problem' is a manufactured crises based on doctored and inconclusive data. It is not a scientific problem, but, rather a socio/political one. Long before the time span you specify passes, it will have become painfully obvious that the CAGW scare was just that, a scare. The socio/political aspects will be studied as yet another baffling example of mass hysteria. The answers as to they 'why' of the CAGW will be found, not in science, but in sociology, such as the work of Gustav LeBon (The crowd: A study of the popular mind).
Overpopulation is a problem, but it has been and will continue to be solved by reductions in the birth rate, and improvements in agricultural methods and technology. It has repeatedly been forecast to be about to bring about the end of the world as we know it, and, yet, the predictions of crises have all turned out to be poppycock. Today, the average number of calories produced per person is higher than it has ever been. To the extent that we have famines and hardship, they are caused by problems in distribution; these are brought about by political instability and other, similar problems.
Notably, the past offers lessons for the future; 100 years ago, the big concern that was thought to be the limiting factor for urban development was going to be how one would ever transport that much horse manure out of the cities. It is a fitting analogy; the next generation will have to cope with the overload of (socio/political) horse manure now being (irresponsibly) slung about by the CAGW alarmists.
Global Warming ended on 2012, confirmed by our Satelite reports November 28/ 2012 that ICE is accumulating on all parts of earth's cold areas. Global Command.
In, say, one or two centuries, what do you think the history books will have to say about these two different but related issues? How do you think each will progress and what would the solutions, if any, have been?
Obviously answers would be highly speculative; there is so much we still don't know, especially the technological developments between now and then. I'm not expecting an exact prediction; I don't have a time machine to check. So just what you think is likely to happen, based on your understanding of science, politics, human nature etc. Best will probably be chosen randomly, possibly weighted for quality and style.
This will be my last question for a while; I need to take a break to concentrate on the real world. I hope to be back in the spring or summer.
A prosperous 2014 everyone.
Neither. AGW will be classified as another Y2K or Mayan calendar apocalypse crisis that never was. People have been predicting catastrophic apocalypse from overpopulation since the late 1700s and not a single prediction has ever come to fruition. That is yet another BS crisis that really isn't. The greater problem is that people actually are trying to force socioeconomic changes on false crisis such as these.
Both are problems that feed each other. AGW increases temperature and sunshine and reproduction. Increased population uses more energy and causes more AGW.
As we have no control of fictional entities it must be overpopulation.
Must dash now as I have a list to write.( humour)
AGW will have its page.
It will go down as science's biggest folly.
Few will admit that they ever believed any of it.
Neither, they are both non issues.
