Perhaps the single most important answer to the OP's question is energy production. Fossil fuels have literally fueled the human population explosion. We would not have been able to produce nearly enough food to support our population growth without cheep energy. And yes, the cheep energy has come with liabilities of its own.

The single most important answers are:

1. Chemical fertilizers

2. Industrialized agriculture.

Prior to 1800, the whole world was in the Malthusian trap. Population growth is bounded by the rate of growth of agricultural production, which in turn is bounded by the rate of growth of aerable land under cultivation. Get them to give birth faster, and the population becomes less healthy due to reduced per capita nutritional availability and death rate increase. So population gorwth rate remain contained.

After 1800, particularly after 1900, the per acre productivity of farm land has grown even faster than population growth, thanks to chemical fertilizers and mass planting of optimal, but genetically uniform, crops. So population growth became unconstrained by food production in more and more of the world. hence the explosion in human population.

(December 16, 2014 at 9:48 am)whateverist Wrote: There is hope.

http://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg

It misses the biggest most important factor..... Religion !

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(December 14, 2014 at 9:57 pm)simplemoss Wrote: I'm confused what is this thread about? The obvious answer should be advancements in technology and medicine. Is the OP trying too say the common sense answer is wrong or is this just one of our posters who still in the 6th grade and hasn't taken any history lessons yet??

I bet you're glad your science teacher wasn't quite as condescending as you are.
I'm asking so I can try to understand. And it's "people in the know" like you that don't like being challenged on points that I find annoying .... isn't that how we all learn?

Oh and did you skip your English lessons to go do science and geog?

- to/too/two
- who/who's/whose

oh and you're confused what the thread is about? add comprehension to the list too!

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(December 16, 2014 at 12:26 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(December 14, 2014 at 8:23 pm)lifesagift Wrote: yeah you patronising idiot.. thanks for making me fell like I missed something !

tut!

I think that explains the disparity between your posts and your reputation. Nothing fails to get respect like being thin-skinned on the internet...unless you can make it funny.

not bothered by the post/reputation disparity, but otherwise, a good point well made.
I ask more questions than I answer, I'm not out to harvest a particular site's "reputation" points!

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I find it amazing that there are allegedly more people alive on Earth today, than all the rest of the people that ever existed added together.

I ask the question in the OP and many of you offer great answers. Some I don't believe, some I find brilliant.
Others criticise me for asking... maybe because I ask more than once... if your were a college lecturer, wouldn't you want your students to say they didn't understand? or would you want them just to nod, and not understand? and maybe the fact I ask the question again means you didn't do very well in your answer?!

This is a great forum, and if you're gonna get haughty, then so am I. Thanks to the mod for reacting in kind, and not wielding the power, appreciated.

So anyone care to take on where population will go in the next 200 years?

(December 16, 2014 at 5:14 pm)lifesagift Wrote: So anyone care to take on where population will go in the next 200 years?

As society developed from subsistence to leisured affluence, people put off having children and death rate begins to approach now diminished birth rate, so population levels off.

If wealth continues to spread around the world (on the whole there are lot more people in the world reaching leisured affluence each year than dropping back to subsistence poverty) eventually diminished birth rate will spread to all continents and human population as a whole will level off.

(December 16, 2014 at 5:47 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(December 16, 2014 at 5:14 pm)lifesagift Wrote: So anyone care to take on where population will go in the next 200 years?

As society developed from subsistence to leisured affluence, people put off having children and death rate begins to approach now diminished birth rate, so population levels off.

If wealth continues to spread around the world (on the whole there are lot more people in the world reaching leisured affluence each year than dropping back to subsistence poverty) eventually diminished birth rate will spread to all continents and human population as a whole will level off.

the poor will continue as is, and produce children with no food and disease, so I accept they will remain constant, albeit with slightly increased numbers due to medicines reaching more regions.

But religious based, developing countries will continue to have as many sons as they can, and increase dramatically. They already make up half the population, so they will create health and food problems surely, as well as much conflict and wars?

I know right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

http://www.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=YpDPZ6Dg3YI

(December 16, 2014 at 5:53 pm)lifesagift Wrote:

(December 16, 2014 at 5:47 pm)Chuck Wrote: As society developed from subsistence to leisured affluence, people put off having children and death rate begins to approach now diminished birth rate, so population levels off.

If wealth continues to spread around the world (on the whole there are lot more people in the world reaching leisured affluence each year than dropping back to subsistence poverty) eventually diminished birth rate will spread to all continents and human population as a whole will level off.

the poor will continue as is, and produce children with no food and disease, so I accept they will remain constant, albeit with slightly increased numbers due to medicines reaching more regions.

But religious based, developing countries will continue to have as many sons as they can, and increase dramatically. They already make up half the population, so they will create health and food problems surely, as well as much conflict and wars?

The experience seems to be so long as the country is actually "developing", it will eventually reach the point in material development where benefits of the newly acquired realities of a leisured existence with spare spending power would overcome the religious stricture to squander the leisure and spending power on additional unwanted and highly troublesome babies, and birthrate would drop.

The religious trumpets the power of the spiritual. But the power of the spiritual is impotent before the power of the material every time the power of the spiritual had been so bold and foolhardy as to test itself against the power of the material.

(December 16, 2014 at 5:47 pm)Chuck Wrote: As society developed from subsistence to leisured affluence, people put off having children and death rate begins to approach now diminished birth rate, so population levels off.

If wealth continues to spread around the world (on the whole there are lot more people in the world reaching leisured affluence each year than dropping back to subsistence poverty) eventually diminished birth rate will spread to all continents and human population as a whole will level off.

to cont...
-at, just to be upfront, historic highs and density. There will...someday, be more of us than there have ever been before (in the same amount of space), but it will eventually become a static number. If we were focused on that eventuality today....tomorrow would be a better day..hehehe.

Overpopulation is a myth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow05jHiHJ...ata_player