How many people live on Earth? What is the maximum number of people able to accommodate Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Recently, scientists have calculated the maximum number of people that the biosphere can withstand. On the one hand, the forecast turned out to be optimistic - even if the population size Homo sapiens reaches 10 billion people, hunger can still be avoided. However, at the current rate of population growth, this milestone may soon be overcome.

"The strength of mankind is so much greater than the strength of the Earth, spent on supporting its existence, that the human race must be overtaken by premature death - in one form or another." These ominous words philosopher Thomas Malthus wrote in late XVIII century in his essay on how he sees the future of mankind.

Humanity's irresistible urge to reproduce, according to Malthus, will inevitably lead to overpopulation of the planet, the destruction of all resources and death from starvation. To what maximum in the "support of the existence" of mankind can the Earth reach? And how right is Malthus in his vision of our future?

Maximum " throughput"the planet, according to modern scientists, is nine to ten billion people. Sociobiologist Edward Wilson bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources. First, the number fresh water limited. And secondly, the Earth can no longer produce the same amount of food as 200 years ago. Even with maximum efficiency, that is, if absolutely all the grain grown will go to people and not to livestock (which is an inefficient way of converting plant energy into food energy), there are restrictions in the distribution of the crop.

“If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving the livestock with little or no grain, 1.4 billion hectares of arable land could feed 10 billion people,” Wilson cites his calculations. The harvest from these hectares would amount to two billion tons of grain per year. This is enough for 10 billion herbivorous citizens, but omnivores could feed four times less with such an amount of grain. With so much of the world's grain harvest going to feed livestock and poultry, two billion tons of grain would barely cover the needs of the 2.5 billion meat-eaters and those who end up eating them.

Ten billion people is the level at which there will still be no squabbling over a piece of bread. And this is the extreme limit. It is unrealistic to transfer everyone to plant foods - many are not going to give up meat - therefore, we can already say with confidence now: the Earth will not be able to feed ten billion people.

Population biologist Doel Cohen of Columbia University in New York adds that there are a number of other factors limiting the planet's ability to cycle nitrogen, the rate of carbon dioxide recycling in the atmosphere, ensuring enough phosphorus, and so on. Even if the entire world's population could be converted to vegetarianism, we could easily die out due to lack of oxygen. How exactly humanity will affect the atmosphere is not yet known for sure - the volume of emissions is rather big, but more and more methods are being developed to help avoid turning the Earth into a giant greenhouse. "The truth is, no one knows when and at what population level the limit will be reached," says Cohen.

The seven billionth inhabitant of the planet was born a month ago. The United Nations predicts that the 10 billionth baby will be born in 2100. However, in almost 90 years, humanity can turn around in the opposite direction, scientists say. The trend is that families are becoming smaller and smaller in composition. Comparing data from 230 countries since 1950, the researchers concluded that in most countries, the birth rate has been steadily falling, says Gerhard Heilig, head of the UN's Office of Population Estimates and Projections.

In order to avoid subjective judgments, scientific methods of counting participants in mass events should be used.

Every time any political force holds protests, there is bound to be speculation about the number of participants. As the experience of studying protest movements in the world shows, playing with the numbers of the number of supporters becomes indispensable integral part information support of the protests.

Protest organizers tend to always exaggerate the number of people who took part in the action, thus, as if claiming that the number of their active supporters is much larger than it really is. Visual estimates of the number of protesters, according to experts, can distort real data by several times, from 2 to 10.

Especially if the visual assessment is done in a horizontal plane, because with such a look, the crowd seems to be a continuous mass of people standing close to each other. The higher the viewpoint rises, the more objective the assessment becomes, as when viewed from above at an angle of 90 degrees, the distance between people and sparsely populated areas become visible.

But even a view from above does not give complete objectivity in the calculations. Especially when there is a desire to wishful thinking. For example, when a rally was held in Hong Kong in memory of the people who died during the protests on Tiananmen Square, according to the organizers, 150,000 people took part in it. While the police estimated the number of participants at 77,000.

Watson and Yip, known for their work on crowd counting techniques, estimated a crowd density of less than 2 people per square meter. Accordingly, given that Victory Square, where the rally took place, has 42,000 square meters, therefore, the number of participants was approximately the same as calculated by the police department.

Therefore, in order to avoid various subjective assessments, one of the existing methods must be applied in order to know how to count the number of people in a crowd. Moreover, now with the help of the program Google Maps you can accurately determine the size of any site with an accuracy of up to a meter.

One of the most common methods is the Jacobs Crowd Formula. Herbert Jacobs, a well-known professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, while watching student rallies protesting the Vietnam War, set himself the task of counting their number. University Square was paved with large square slabs of the same size, so Jacobs counted the number of people in several squares, then multiplied them by the total number of squares and found out the total.

He also established the rules for determining the density of the crowd. According to the most commonly used classification rare crowd"- this is when one person occupies about 1 m 2, in dense crowd 2.5 people fit on one meter and finally very dense crowd(pandemonium) when on one square meter there are about 4 people. In fact, at rallies it almost never happens that the entire crowd stands tightly shoulder to shoulder, this usually happens in the front rows near the stands, or when moving at the head of the column, the remaining parts of the square are always filled extremely unevenly and, as they move away from the stands , the crowd dissipates.

Thus, knowing the area of ​​the place of the rally and estimating the approximate density of the crowd, it is possible to accurately determine the number of participants in the rally. For example, the width of the building of the Palace of the Republic according to Google map is 47.5 meters, the width of the platform from the beginning of the steps to the fence across the road from the Palace, including the sidewalk, is 19 meters. In total, the area in front of the Palace of the Republic is 47.5 x 19 = 902.5 square meters. If you fill this space with the maximum density at which people will stand, like in a full elevator or like in a trolleybus at rush hour, then 902.5 x 4 = 3610 people will come out.

If we assume that such a site will be filled with the usual density of 2.5 people per meter, typical for rallies and more or less evenly, without “bald spots” with a filling of one person per 1-2 meters, then the figure comes out 902.5 x 2 ,5 = 2256 people.

In the event that the filling is not complete, and there is a rarefaction in the rows, starting from the second, third from the podium, the filling of the site will be 902.5 x 1 = approximately 902 people.

By the same principle, you can calculate the number of people at any site. For those who want to calculate how many people the Great National Assembly Square can accommodate, we recall that its length, from Pushkin Street to Banulescu-Bodoni, is 295 meters, width - 25 meters (with a roadway - 44 meters), a total of 7375 m 2 or 12980 m 2 with the carriageway of Stefan cel Mare boulevard. Thus, depending on the density of filling and the use of the roadway, the Great National Assembly Square can accommodate up to 52 thousand people, this is without taking into account the park and adjacent streets.

Currently, writes Money.ro, 7.25 billion people live on the planet, their number is constantly growing. Every five years, the world's population increases by about one million more people. The current population of the planet is ten times greater than 400 years ago. And just 50 years ago, 2.5 billion people lived on Earth. Improved living conditions and the quality of health care have increased life expectancy as well as increased resistance to disease, resulting in a population explosion that was unimaginable a few hundred years ago. In addition, the birth rate in some areas of the world continues to be high.

In 40 years, the world's population could reach 30 billion

Studies conducted by scientists show that if there are no significant changes, then in the next 40 years the number of inhabitants of the Earth may exceed 20 or even 30 billion people. The saddest thing is that in such conditions our planet can become so impoverished that the population risks being left without water, food and energy supplies. Other researchers, however, are more moderate in their estimates and believe that the world's population will increase to about 10.5 billion by 2050. One way or another, the problem of the limited resources that the planet has is already there. A quite logical question arises: how many people can our planet withstand, while providing them with normal living conditions?

Carl Safina, author of The View from a Lazy Point of View. A natural year in an unnatural world,” answers this question with the word “depends.” “Depends on lifestyle. If everyone receives 800 kg of grain a year, like the Americans, then the earth can bear 2.5 billion people. Problem: We passed this barrier in 1950. The earth can bear 10 billion people if they live like Indians. Problem: All Indians want to live like Americans,” wrote Carl Safina in an article published in the Huffington Post.

It takes four planets to live like Americans

So much wood will be used to build houses alone that the forests of Indonesia, Myanmar, eastern Russia and Papua New Guinea will disappear before 2025, along with a number of birds, insects and monkeys, the scientist believes. At the same time, the cited author assures, for the same density of cars as in the USA, China will need to produce 30% more cars than there are now in the world. They will use the amount of fuel equal to 98 million barrels of oil per day. To date, humanity produces an average of 85 million barrels of "black gold" per day.

According to American biologist Joel Coen of Rockefeller University, in his book on the subject, it takes 900 tons of water to grow 1 ton of wheat. In order to survive, humanity needs vast areas to produce food, clothing, medicines, Construction Materials, as well as enough for all residents clean air and clean water. According to his calculations, on average, 2.1 hectares of land with water are needed in order to provide one person with everything necessary. If this person lives by US standards, he needs 10 hectares, which means that in order to provide all earthlings with the same standards as the Americans, we will need 4 more planets like Earth, writes The Guardian.

Social catastrophe: in a few decades or centuries?

Viorel Bedescu, a professor at the Bucharest Polytechnic University, believes that if the world's population grows to 9 billion by 2050, this figure is not close to the limit of the planet's capabilities. The Romanian professor and Richard Cathcart, a consulting geographer from Burbank in California, repeated Fremlin's calculations together using more modern thermodynamic models. Assuming that each person radiates an average of 120 watts of heat and that life will become very unpleasant if the average temperature on the Earth's surface rises too high, the researchers say that the Earth can support 1.3 quadrillion people without overheating. The two researchers acknowledge, however, that the Earth's resources may be depleted long before population reaches its theoretical peak.

1. No, orientation is determined partly by genetics, partly by environment, but at a very early age - up to two three years. And even if you tell your child every day “be a real man, love only women”, then this, of course, will be postponed in his subconscious, but it is very unlikely to affect his orientation.

2. “..whether they were attracted to the same sex, the percentage is very high” - the fact that a person has ever thought about it does not mean that he can become gay. After all, sometimes in a fit of anger the thought comes to you of killing a hated person, but you do not become a murderer. It's adrenaline, it just so happened. It is the same here, it is impossible to confuse “what will happen if” with latent homosexuality.

3. "there are latent gays and such open propaganda can push them to become openly gay." No. First, if you have studied Freud, then you know how psychologists and psychiatrists treat him. He is, of course, the father of science, but most of his work is not taken seriously. Secondly, even if so, then the latent gay is already a priori gay. And so, and so. They just didn’t tell him that this was normal and he didn’t understand what was happening to him, as a result, a defensive reaction turned on. If you have a child with hypertension growing up, and you tell him “yes, all your blood pressure is bullshit, nothing rises in you, you thought up yourself here, go and play football with everyone”, then he will suffer from this and think that he is a sissy. And it's not his fault. As a result, you yourself understand what is happening (this, by the way, is not a fictional story, but my personal one).

That's why gays are so often shown in Hollywood films - this is not some kind of evil propaganda or an attempt to please everyone, this is a sign to gays that homosexuality is normal. So that they do not suffer, do not consider themselves the dregs of society and worse than others, so that they do not get drunk, in the end. That's why it's needed. No movie with gay in leading role will not induce a natural to be attracted to the same sex, completely different mechanisms are responsible for this. But if you treat straight people chauvinistically and say that heterosexual attraction is not normal, then a straight man, trying to make himself a full-fledged part of society, will begin to convince himself that he loves men, while acting against his nature and destroying himself. What is happening now is the same, but in reverse - gays are shut up and made to think that this is not normal, as a result of which a homosexual can even create a heterosexual marriage, start a family, children ... but he will suffer. All that time. There are cases not only of suicides on the basis of a life that a person does not need, but also of mental disorders.

How many people live on Earth? Probably, every person sometimes asked a similar question. Population growth on our planet has always occurred: climate change, drought, famine, predators, the struggle between tribes only slowed down the demographic process.

6.7 billion people - this is the figure indicating how many people live on Earth today, which is 6% of the total population (107 billion) that has ever walked on its surface. Of course, this number is approximate, since it is difficult to imagine what happened in ancient times, and even more so to calculate.

How many people can "fit" on Earth

If we imagine how many people live on Earth, then we can understand that with the growth of the population, the needs of the population grow, and the uncontrollability of the demographic process can lead to an environmental catastrophe: epidemics, hunger, an increase in crime, poverty.

Many people often ask the question: how many people can the Earth withstand? More than lives today. But the planet is not dimensionless, nor is its patience and endurance. The German Foundation for the Population of the Earth has calculated that every minute its number increases by 155 people. In the total annual amount, this can be represented as the appearance of another Germany. How many people on Earth can "fit" depends on their consumption of the planet's strategic reserves, in which, of course, the Americans are leading. If all inhabitants consumed the resources of the Earth with the same appetite, then the limit of ecological endurance would remain in the distant past. With the thrifty lifestyle of the Brazilian Indians, the planet could feed 30 billion people.

Scientists theoretically tried to weigh how many people on Earth in weight units, and found out that obesity, which affects half of humanity, harms not only the specific person who consumes a large number of food, but also the planet as a whole, increasing the load on it.

Examples of population density

Surprisingly, 70% of the population is crowded into 7% of the entire territory of the Earth. In Moscow alone, there are about 13,000 people per square kilometer, while Canada, the whole country, is empty. Conventionally, it can even be called deserted, because in certain areas there are about 100 square meters for every Canadian. kilometers. Thus, the uneven distribution of people on the planet is an extremely important issue that interests the minds of many ordinary people.

The most populous country is China, whose government has already begun to take measures to slow down the process of overpopulation of the country. In second place are India and the United States, which are inactive in the demographic issue. It is India, according to UN forecasts, that in the near future will become the leader in population growth, the number of which in 50 years will reach 1.5 billion people on Earth.

How long does such a rapid demographic progress last, which, in addition to the detrimental impact on the ecosystem, breaks the fate of people, forcing them to leave their inhabited lands due to climate change, lack of water and food? Migration occurs due to violation natural environment a habitat. In 1996, the UN made an attempt to calculate how many people lived on Earth and how many people tried to leave the habitable lands. The results were shocking: the number of environmental migrants was 26 million; 137 million are going to leave their country.

Reasons for growing demographic growth

A number of studies have shown that the main population growth occurs in countries with a low standard of living.

To answer the question: how many people are on Earth now, you need to understand the reasons for the increased birth rate, especially in countries with a low standard of living:

• the biological law of the struggle for survival, implemented on a subconscious level and consisting in the opinion: the less chance of offspring, the higher the birth rate;
• continuation of the family, supported by economic considerations: the number of children in the family guarantees the number of planned workers, on which the maintenance of the old age of disabled parents depends;
• socio-psychological features: customs, traditions, religious dogmas that have evolved over the centuries, taking into account economic and social features life on different stages development of society.

In poor countries, which are characterized by high infant mortality and short life expectancy, the birth rate is very high, so almost all families there have many children. The aid given annually to the poor to improve their standard of living, however paradoxical it may sound, only worsens it. That is, there is an impact not on the cause, but on the effect. In addition, poor countries that exist on subsidies from richer countries get used to them and stop any attempts to correct the situation by reducing the birth rate.

High standard of living - low birth rate

While uncontrolled reproduction is taking place in poor countries, developed countries are trying to cope with the problem of extinction, even using incentive and bonus systems. For example, in France, each child born is valued at $10,000. Russia pays parents $11,000, but under certain conditions. Leader in rewards for each born child($ 13,000) is Italy, or rather its small town of Laviano, whose population is 2,000 inhabitants.

At a high degree material well-being the need for fertility decreases, the death rate falls, and the average life expectancy increases. As an example, we can consider Thailand, where in 25 years (from 1965 to 1990) the standard of living increased by almost 12 times, and the birth rate dropped sharply. Such dynamics is observed in most countries that have embarked on the path of industrialization.

With rising living standards and a well-developed pension system, children are no longer an economic priority for parents, as is the case in a traditional society. The number of families with two or more children is decreasing; Many parents need only one child. Moreover, the decision to have a baby is made deliberately, taking into account all the pros and cons, since the modern society become individualistic claims to their own happiness. Therefore, many couples remain childless, and this directly affects how many people live on Earth.

Forecasts

According to cautious forecasts, by 2075 the world's population will be about 9 billion people, after which this figure will decline.

The assumption of how many people on Earth will be due to the following reasons:

• The growth of the welfare of the population of developing countries.
• The rapidly growing level of education in developing countries, which dramatically increases the possibility of increasing the well-being of the population. The income of qualified specialists is much higher than that of uneducated people. High level education reduces the need for numerous offspring.
• The steady increase in urbanization (movement of people from rural areas to the city) of all regions of the planet. The higher the percentage of urban residents, the higher the level of education of the population and, accordingly, its income. And this again affects the decrease in the birth rate.
• Growing mortality from epidemics and AIDS, which in 20 years infected more than 60 million people and claimed the lives of more than 22 million. Particularly affected by AIDS are residents of poor countries, who experience a catastrophic lack of a general medical culture, hospitals and medicines.

Natural selection?

The current size of the world's population is certainly large. Apparently, therefore, catastrophes began to occur on it more and more often, the number of which increased by 3 times compared to the last century. How many people lived on Earth? How many more will be born? How many people are on earth today? Perhaps the planet independently regulates the population and tries to restore the natural balance, freeing itself from its overabundance.