Human population reaches 7 Billion! - But may level off on its own

Here is some snippets from a newspaper article today talking about the human population reaching 7 billion and showing some of the growth rates over the last 70,000 years.

THE world's population will hit SEVEN BILLION in the next few days, according to United Nations estimates.

The landmark comes just 12 years after the total reached six billion.
The rate of increase is staggering. Many people alive today were born when the world population was less than two billion. And Britain is mirroring the world's expansion.

In 1801, our population was 10.5million — today it is close to 62million.

Fertility rates worldwide have fallen dramatically. In 1950 the world fertility rate was 4.95 children per woman, by 1975 it was below four and today it is less than three. The birth rate still exceeds the death rate but the gap is narrowing and the population may level off at around ten billion in 2100.

Some interesting stats in the article especcially the info about fertility rates which could cause a natural level off in population. Population may even start to reduce naturally once we reach the 10 billion marker.

Just wondered what your thoughts were on this.

Link to the article - 7,000,000,000 How world's population hit huge landmark

reply to post by Silicis n Volvo

The birth rate still exceeds the death rate but the gap is narrowing and the population may level off at around ten billion in 2100.

Um I don't think it will level off that quick, if at all. The population still increases by a rate of 1.1% each year, and if you think that's a small number consider this thread I made not long ago: Ever wonder how much of the Earths mass is made up of Humans?

Consider a weed, and how it multiplies in number until it overwhelms all other life in the area. You start with one weed, and from that one comes a bunch of seeds, and you end up with 5 more weeds. From those 5 come another 30 weeds. And so on, and so forth. That is exactly the type of increase the human population works by.

EDIT: this lecture explains the math:

Interesting, we always talk about over population but what if nature sorts this out for us...

We think we are in control but what if we are not, a virus wiping out a species might seem bad for us but mother nature doesn't care about that, there might be a time in the future when a virus is top of the food chain, we are kidding ourself's if we think that we are the most important being's on this planet.

Nature is building up an immunity to the human virus. Interesting.

A good world war, normally sorts out the population crisis ?

I kinda see humans in the world at the moment, like these mice, in this video below.

I apologize for the video, looks like its been filmed on a toaster, but it was the best one i could find, to show my point LOL