AFAIK - The species number may be this high because animals with slight variations in genetic makeup etc are classed as different species, despite being 99% similar to another..

Best analogy may be to compare it to different versions of the cold virus, they all infect us, just the virus structure differs.

How many freaking bicycles does the world need? aren't there enough in the stores that people DON'T buy?

New book titles published this year was one of the only ones i saw not moving at an insane rate.

Wow that is a pretty cool site. I wonder how accurate those numbers are though. How do they get these numbers? The illegal drug spending worldwide is insane!

Looking at the "realtime stats" feels claustrophobic. I doubt the population is growing this fast. How is anyone going to measure how many people are actually dying and being born?

EXCELLENT find. S&F.

Thank you. Bookmarked.

A great post OP, thanks.

I think the one most compelling thing I took from looking at the data/estimates presented in this way was when I clicked on the 'Current World Population' link to see their page about world population growth, and the graphs of human population from 10,000 years up, as currently understood by science along with their summary of growth rates. I'd really recommend you take a look if you haven't done yet.

I see that when my grandparents were born in the 2nd decade of c.20 there were still less than 2 billion people on the planet, and we had taken thousands of years to get there, and now we are approaching 7 billion within just 90 years!

Regardless of where you stand on the clearly hot macro debates about specific resources (oil/gas), surely the cumulative pressure on vital resources (food, water, fuel) and speed of this change and it's convergence with mankind's very recent (seen against the graph of population growth) acquisition of WMD and post-industrial revolution pollution spell big concerns for anybody even half awake?

Interesting sites there.

Far from accurate though, but hey, it gives you an idea of what's going on, and I can appreciate that.

As for the concern about oil...does it matter? 42 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years from now...it will be gone eventually.

The numbers in regards to oil is very interesting. Oil is not about energy/fuel, it's about money. In fact, energy isn't about energy...energy is about money! If it were about energy...we would have other sources readily available for us to consume and re-use(oil can't be reused), some a lot healthier than what we currently use.

Originally posted by curioustype
Regardless of where you stand on the clearly hot macro debates about specific resources (oil/gas), surely the cumulative pressure on vital resources (food, water, fuel) and speed of this change and it's convergence with mankind's very recent (seen against the graph of population growth) acquisition of WMD and post-industrial revolution pollution spell big concerns for anybody even half awake?

If youve ever seen European farmers plowing hundreds of tuck loads of fruit and vegetables into pits in the ground simply to deny African farmers from selling their own crops overseas (which just end up rotting at the docks) simply to keep their trade subsidies intact along with seeing Australian dairy farmers literally drain rivers dry to irrigate farms on heavily resource poor and over farmed waste lands (which where bought real cheap since the land was basically useless), simply to grow grass to breed and manufacture inefficient meat for a flesh obsessed humanity....

There is no vital resource issue for the bolded part of your post... although I will agree with you on the others, ie the fuel, petrol and our ridiculous weapons. Theres plenty of food for everyone... just takes some major changes to humanities mind set... but thats the real bugbear.

What amazed me about this site are two fold. 1) I have never seen it before so thank you for the eye opener. 2) The numbers that really struck me are how many people dont have access to clean drinking water and how much the US spend on illegal drugs.
Wow! Is all I can say. Makes me thankful for a good well with clean drinking water!!!

These are not "real time statistics" at all.

they are algorithms based on other stats and other aggregated data that may in turn not be accurate at all.

For the purpose of making people think about such things, it's interesting, but is it an accurate reflection? I doubt that very much.

Originally posted by 5 oClock
I gotta get my calculator out to see how long till the end of oil.

41 years... A billion or so until the Sun runs out.

Great link. But I'm a little suspicious about the wow effect.

Even though it's just a programmed running clock, it's very addicting.

And wtf, oil is gonna end? I heard specialists say that it would in the long run regenerate sooner than it's used.

I know this site is not completely accurate, but even if those numbers are off by a few thousand or whatever it's still crazy.

15006 species have become extinct this year
7 billion cigarettes smoked so far today.
Also the food stats are interesting.

Very interesting site indeed.