Posts

Showing posts from September, 2015

Life is Violent

In the 30 years from 1980 to 2010, the population of Africa more than doubled. That is a natural rate of growth for a human population without environmental constraints. Actually, it is a low estimate, because there were famines, horrific wars, and deadly diseases in Africa during those years. Also, many people in Africa had access to modern birth control. Nevertheless, the population doubled in less than 30 years. So, doubling every 30 years is a very conservative estimate of a natural rate of human population growth without war, disease, famine and modern birth control. Many populations have grown faster than that. Now consider how that rate of growth would increase a population over time. In 30 years, the population would double. In 300 years, the population would double 10 times, so it would multiply by 1024. In 1000 years, the population would double roughly 33 times, so it would multiply by about 8.6 billion. In 10,000 years, the population would double 333 ti