While surfing around the web, I found a statistic that said there were roughly 298 million people in the United States right now.
That surprised me. I thought we were hovering around 250 million. So I went to the source: the U.S. Census Bureau. On that site they have a population clock, and sure enough, we’re at 297+ million people here in the US of A*. Wow.
According to that site, the population has a net increase of one person every 10 seconds (accounting for births, deaths, and net immigration). Given that rate, and the current number, it looks like we’ll hit the 300,000,000 mark in about 253 days, in early September (the 9th, according to my calculations). Since they use a formula to calculate the population instead of actually counting people, this is approximate, but probably close.
I’m not one for arbitrary milestones, but I have to admit that’s pretty interesting. I’ll have to check back on that clock in a few months and see how close we’re getting.
At Dec. 30 at 18:29 Greenwich time, we had 297,813,672 people. The world population was at 6,488,327,783. These are estimates based on formulae.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:41 am
Well, a little while later (10 min it looks like) and we have…
12/30/05 at 18:39 GMT (EST+5) is
297,813,714
December 30th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
And each one of ‘em is in a car in front of mine (except the ones who want to drive really fast; they’re behind me).
I’m still getting used to approaching 220 million instead of 200 million.
December 30th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Do we have to subtract the 11 million illegal aliens? ;o)
December 30th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
mark, they go to London every single morning, all of them, just to annoy me, the only driver obeying the speed limits. I can’t pull out to overtake the slow ones because of the fast ones blocking me in.
December 30th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
I thought we were hovering around 250 million.
Don’t feel too bad. Around Thanksgiving, my dad revealed that he thought the world population was around 4 billion.
December 30th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
“Don’t feel too bad. Around Thanksgiving, my dad revealed that he thought the world population was around 4 billion.”
And possibly for the same reason for the BA’s 250 million: it might have very well been the correct ball-park figure when he was studying geography or history.
December 30th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
300 million? Nearly 6.5 Billion? wow, humans are such successful species that you wonder how much of our billions (people, and yes, money) are wasted on those who would like to reverse critical thinking, and take us back to simpler times (when we all lived in caves, using bat guano on starchy roots as a tasty treat).
If more of these teeming masses would be better aware of science, and the fruits and benefits it can provide us as a species, we would challenge ourselves, reach the limits of our potential, and actually make a difference. Not just in a global scale, but beyond.
200,000 extremely successful years as homo sapiens, and a great majority still believe in invisible forces guiding us, tugging at our spiritual tethers. If we had less Pat Robertsons, and more BA’s, who knows, perhaps those of us on Sunday morning would take a pill, and resolve the inevitable New Year’s Day hangover. What we need are a few more Captain Picard-like figures, to sit at the helm, and proudly exclaim “engage”.
Happy New Year to all, and may science win out in 2006.
December 30th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
The late great Carl Sagan once said “billions and billions of stars.
Now it’s billions and billions of humans. In what year shall the population of the planet Earth be One Trillion? Could this be the reason why so many nations and corporations are building spaceports right now?
December 30th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Ray Gray, I don’t think any country would be able to keep up with population growth by sending them into space. Not only would you need huge capacity (passenger wise) earth-to-orbit crafts, but you would also need somewhere to send them.
There’s plenty of room on earth, we just need to Terraform it.
The biggest concern facing the human race is the Elvis impersonators. At current growth rate, one third of the earths population will be Elvis impersonators in 2019. We will need to find an audience for them or they will be permanently unemployed, so the SETI program is very important.
BTW, Carl Sagan denied ever using the expression “billions and billions” in his book “Pale Blue Dot”.
December 31st, 2005 at 2:02 am
Carl Sagan was one of my favorites — I never met him personally, but he was such a powerhouse for making difficult ideas clear and bringing the public along for the intellectual ride. Gone too soon . . .
Here’s a cartoon:
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/sagan/kid_sagan.gif
December 31st, 2005 at 2:05 pm
When I die (not soon, I hope), there will be one less. But then 10 seconds later, someone will be born and we’ll be back where we were before. Darn! At least for a 10 second period, I will make the world a better place (assuming that a smaller population is better than a larger one).
December 31st, 2005 at 2:53 pm
“In what year shall the population of the planet Earth be One Trillion?”
Never.
Earth can’t even support six billion. We’re consuming resources much faster than they’re being replenished. Not just fossil fuels – soil is being lost rapidly too.
The answer is clear. Nations where most of the population have education, jobs, homes and at least scrap of political power are holding steady or losing population. The massive growth in population is happening in nations where the desperately poor have no education and no options. Giving all of the people of Earth… ALL of them… education and choices will reverse this trend of increasing population.
The population of regions suffering terrible disasters such as wars and natural upheavals increases despite the increased death rate. The population of regions enjoying stability and peace decreases because citizens have the children they want, not the children that blind biology forces on them. Increasing stability and peace globally will reduce population.
As for reducing population through extra-Terrestrial emmigration… not gonna happen. The best we can hope to do is to send “seeds” of humanity across the void so that if Earth is destroyed, humanity will carry on. We’re not even close to setting up a self-sustaining colony anywhere – even Mars, the friendliest extra-Terrestrial place we’ve ever found. We’re stuck with this one planet for the forseeable future. We don’t know of any other place where we can even hope to survive.
We know the answers:
VERY greatly reduce fossil fuel use.
Spread resources among all people of Earth. How many childhood vaccinations can be bought at the price of one mansion or one Leer-jet?
Educate all. Start with the poorest, not the richest.
Free condoms for everyone.
Massively fund non-fossil energy research.
Make do with much, much less than we imagine we need to be happy. Find other ways to be happy than obtaining and spending wealth.
We can, possibly, survive if we snap our of our aggressive, greedy “shake the trees and snatch the tubers out of the hands of the fleeing ape-tribe” mentality. If we don’t come to our senses, we’re doomed.
As for “Terra-forming Earth”, we’ve been doing that for hundreds of years. The consequences are going to hit us very soon. Some parts of the globe are already being injured and the rest of the planet is soon to follow.
December 31st, 2005 at 11:01 pm
Again we see the assumption that lower popluation is better. Where does this come from? In every model examined, population growth improves economic projections which leads to better living conditions, higher levels of education, more productive agriculture, in other words, progress. Why are the western economies faltering when population stagnates? It’s really very simple. With top quality medical care and a safe healthy environment, the “first” world has an expected life span of something like 75 years or better (try the “Lifespan Website)
http://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/death_clock.asp
(Why is male higher than female? Who are they kdding?)
With no new babies, imagine the economic chaos – who would buy insurance, hire teachers, buy baby clothes, diapers, or in fact anything with more than a fifty year horizon?
Are zero population growth proponents any better than creationists?
Well, yes – at least they are are looking for answer (creationists are quittters!!).
A world view that does not include an economic strategy to get us there is not useful.
January 1st, 2006 at 11:50 am
Gee
I thought it was 120mill over there….
We are still at 19 I think, with 1/3 living in sydney…
January 1st, 2006 at 4:27 pm
To Mikal555:
Re: “with 1/3 living in Sydney..”
You are assuming that “living in Sydney” is “living” in Sydney (or vice versa).
January 1st, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I once “lived” in Sydney. When I wasn’t working or sleeping, I was stuck in traffic. That’s not a life.
January 2nd, 2006 at 10:31 am
What India needs is a one child law similar to China’s ( If you have more than
one child than the second child will die) If India doesn’t take action, then by 2050, India will be the most populous country in thes world! China needs to strengthen their one-child rule too. If you are really interested now,
then go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/ .
January 3rd, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Sadly, in both China and India, “one child” often means “one son.” In China when the policy was first adopted, a lot of peasants thought that girl children didn’t count, so they kept trying until they had a boy. Also, China didn’t ever exterminate second children as a policy, they just demoted you or your cadre in the Party or cut off financial assistance (and in some cases force abortions or tubal ligations — but I gather the CCP doesn’t explicitly endorse these measures). There seems to be only two reliable cures for large families: educate women and/or have them move to the city.
January 6th, 2006 at 1:04 am
Haa ha…You astronomers, you crazy counter-watchers. I betcha twenty five folx answer this one:
When will unix reach 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 epoch time???
(The predicted fourth coming of Shub-Internet)
January 16th, 2006 at 3:17 am
Mikal555, we are not at 19 million, we are at 22, and Sydney does not have one third of our population, it has about four million, and Melbourne (which is much better) has around 3.1 million, neither near a third of the total